Origins | Bearden's Interests

Biography: Origins

Although Bearden left Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, as a small child, he returned often through the mid-1920s to visit his paternal great-grandparents who were property owners in Charlotte. He also traveled to Pittsburgh where he attended his last two years of high school, living from 1927 through 1929 with his maternal grandparents who ran a boardinghouse for steel mill workers from the south. These two cities as well as New York offered Bearden countless motifs that were the basis for much of his art throughout his career.

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1. Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1966/1967
2. The Block II, 1972
3. Profile/Part I, The Twenties: Pittsburgh Memories, Farewell Eugene, 1978