(back to top)

(back to top)

The Passion of Christ Series established Bearden as an abstract artist.

This painting creates a celebratory mood of rebirth and redemption.

Bearden grew up in Harlem and was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.

(back to top)

He Has Risen (Passion of Christ Series), 1945

oil on gessoed board

36 x 34 in.

James E. Roberts Fund, Roger L. Williams Fund

Learn More

Bearden was a renowned 20^th-century American artist. He grew up in Harlem and was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and his activist parents, who held meetings in their home that included Langston Hughes, a writer, and W. E. B. Du Bois, an educator and civil rights leader. Bearden had wanted to be a doctor and had studied science but changed to mathematics and graduated from New York University. He was a social worker for the New York City Department of Social Services from 1935-1969. He also was a jazz musician and composer. Jazz was an important part of his life and an influence on his art.

Bearden studied art at the Art Students League in New York in 1935. Under the influence of one of his teachers, George Grosz, he began painting social realist subject matter, covering topics on the human condition in a realistic manner. After serving in the Army during World War II, he created a series in 1945 of Cubist-inspired watercolors and paintings called Passion of Christ. He completed 24 of these based on the gospels of Saints Matthew and Mark. The series established Bearden as an abstract painter and gave him his first one-man show in New York, where 20 out of the 24 works were sold. The painting belonging to the IMA was purchased by Duke Ellington.

The religious subject matter reflected Bearden’s interest in Henry Ossawa Tanner’s religious imagery and Albrecht Durer’s Passion series. But Bearden’s works are not so much a translation of the biblical text as they are a visual account of the human condition. Bearden’s work would never completely lose its social content. In Christ Is Risen Bearden captured the spirit of resurrection, and the vibrant colors celebrate rebirth and redemption.

References

Mary Schmidt Campbell and Sharon F. Patton. Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940–1987. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN-13: 978-0195063486

Ruth E. Fine. The Art of Romare Bearden. Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003. ISBN-13: 978-0810946408