Romare Bearden

CTL-E-6232 · Person · artist · 1911–1988 (birth year conflict noted); active as an artist 1935–1988

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-03523 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-1382 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6232. Master record source: User-supplied review 2026-10-17 (Once Upon a Time in Harlem review, Oct 15, 2026) — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Romare Bearden was an American artist celebrated for paintings and collages drawn from African American life in the South, Pittsburgh, and Harlem. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, he grew up mainly in Harlem, where his family's apartment drew writers, artists, and jazz musicians of the Harlem Renaissance. He graduated from New York University in 1935, studied at the Art Students League under George Grosz, and worked for much of his life as a New York City social-services caseworker while making art. After Army service and study in Paris on the G.I. Bill, he returned to New York. In 1963 he helped form Spiral, a collective of Black artists considering art's role in the civil rights movement, and his 1964 Projections exhibition of photomontage-based works brought him wide recognition; by 1966 he could support himself as an artist. Jazz and blues rhythms shaped his collage practice, and he also wrote on art. He received the National Medal of Arts a year before his death in New York in 1988.

The record

• Also known as: Romare Howard Bearden, Romare H. Bearden
• Role(s): Harlem Renaissance figure
• Known for: Artist, author, and songwriter

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 6 — 747 Program, Wave 13; sixth Scan Tail packet at the founder’s 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (script + hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Romare Bearden entity, alias, or variant in the live graph (3,910 entities). ID CTL-E-6232 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger — scan string #2475 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json), banked in the Scan Tail Wave 5 reserve (Appendix E), re-screened CLEAR against the live graph at 3,910 entities by this wave. The supply supplied the name only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: Visual artist (collage, painting, photomontage) and writer; scan rank #2475. Vital status: DECEASED. Birth conflict shown, not blended: the National Gallery of Art (accessed 2026-10-16) gives born September 2, 1911, Charlotte, North Carolina, while the Smithsonian American Art Museum biography text (accessed 2026-10-16) states he was born in 1912 in Charlotte. Both opened sources agree he died in New York in 1988; neither opened page gives an exact death date, so none is asserted. STATISTICS — No sports statistics apply. Dated career markers, sources accessed 2026-10-16: NYU graduation 1935 (SAAM; NGA); Projections exhibition 1964 (SAAM; NGA dates the collage turn to 1964); full-time artist from 1966 (SAAM). MEDIA: photo HELD (HELD — candidate: Chester Higgins photograph of Bearden with Spiral members, c. 1974, as reproduced on the National Gallery of Art page opened 2026-10-16 (Romare Bearden Papers, Wildenstein Plattner Institute); no license claimed — file-level rights read required under CTL-PHOTO-001.); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6232-romare-bearden.svg); video HELD (HELD — no Short in the CTL Shorts Link Map (2026-10-15) under Bearden or Romare Bearden; no near-miss title found in the map.); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A. MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record’s sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (HELD — no Short in the CTL Shorts Link Map (2026-10-15) under Bearden or Romare Bearden; no near-miss title fo) | audio = HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.)

Relationships

• AFRO — affiliated with
  Smithsonian American Art Museum biography: during his NYU years Bearden did editorial drawings for the Baltimore Afro American.
• Harlem Renaissance Reunion Party (1972) — appeared in
  STRONG EVIDENCE
• Once Upon a Time in Harlem — appeared in
  STRONG EVIDENCE

Sources

• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Romare Bearden (accessed 2026-10-16) — artist biography: born in Charlotte, North Carolina (biography text gives 1912 — see conflict note); grew up in Harlem; NYU degree 1935; Art Students League study under George Grosz; New York City social-services caseworker; Army service 1942–1945; Paris study on the G.I. Bill 1950; Spiral group formed 1963; Projections exhibition October 1964; gave up social work in 1966; National Medal of Arts received a year before his death in 1988 — https://americanart.si.edu/artist/romare-bearden-296 (primary source · build store)
• National Gallery of Art, Drawing with Scissors with Romare Bearden (accessed 2026-10-16) — born September 2, 1911, Charlotte, North Carolina; family joined the Great Migration and settled in Harlem; Harlem his primary home until his death in 1988; graduated NYU 1935; caseworker for almost three decades; Spiral collective and the turn to collage in 1964; Tomorrow I May Be Far Away (1967) in the National Gallery collection; jazz and blues as influences — https://www.nga.gov/stories/articles/drawing-scissors-romare-bearden (build store)
• https://americanart.si.edu/artist/romare-bearden-296 (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Romare Bearden was an artist (painter, pioneer of photomontage/collage 'Projections'); he was also a writer — co-author of The Painter's Mind (1969) and Six Black Masters in American Art (1972) — and a songwriter whose songs were published during a period when he concentrated on songwriting in the early 1950s; his Harlem childhood home was a gathering place during the formative Harlem Renaissance of the early 1920s, and he received the National Medal of Arts a year before his death in 1988.

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Record CTL-E-6232 · Combined Graph record U-03523 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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