Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52

Explore Selected Works

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52, Sirens' Song, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms, 2013.142.3

Sirens' Song

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52 · 1979 · color screenprint on wove Lana paper ·  Accession ID  2013.142.3

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52, Odysseus Leaves Nausicaa, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms, 2013.142.5

Odysseus Leaves Nausicaa

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52 · 1979 · color screenprint on wove Lana paper ·  Accession ID  2013.142.5

Printed with mostly geometric shapes in vibrant, flat colors, this stylized horizontal screenprint shows buildings lining a harbor across from us, with a sailboat entering the scene from our right. The top quarter of this print has a band of pale turquoise clouds against a vibrant cobalt-blue sky. The buildings on the shore across from us are mostly nickel or slate gray with black squares and rectangles for windows and doors. A few of the buildings are white and two are hot pink. One arched, sunshine yellow form at the center of the composition could be an opening or a domed roof. One gray building, in front of the yellow, has a band and roof picked out with glittery gold. Several palm trees grow atop the spring-green hills beyond the buildings. A band of caramel brown near the water could be a sandy beach. Lumpy brown forms could be rocks in the water near the shore. The waterway is celestial blue with a few bands in grape purple, light gray, spring green, and turquoise. Billowing white sails pull the boat into the image. A person silhouetted in black holds a shield and spear at the bow. Three long black sticks with white arrows at the end, perhaps more spears or paddles, protrude from the front of the ship, and the side is decorated with several shield-sized panels. The artist signed the paper in the margin under the bottom right corner of the printed image, "Romare Bearden," and numbered the lower left corner, "65/125."
Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52, Home to Ithaca, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms, 2013.142.6

Home to Ithaca

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52 · 1979 · color screenprint on wove Lana paper ·  Accession ID  2013.142.6

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52, Cattle of the Sun God, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms, 2013.142.4

Cattle of the Sun God

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52 · 1979 · color screenprint on wove Lana paper ·  Accession ID  2013.142.4

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52, The Fall of Troy, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms, 2013.142.1

The Fall of Troy

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52 · 1979 · color screenprint on wove Lana paper ·  Accession ID  2013.142.1

A woman stands with her back to us to the right of a person with a man's body and a boar's head in this abstracted, horizontal color print. Both people have black skin, and the scene is created with flat areas of saturated color and stylized forms. The woman’s torso and arms are cobalt blue, and a white skirt wrapped around her waist is decorated with patches and streaks of pine green, black, bright orange, teal blue, and harvest gold. Her head is turned to our left in profile, and she wears a flat red cap. She has a white, cat-like eye and teal-colored whiskers around her mouth. Two yellow snakes twine around her raised right arm, which is bent at the elbow. She bows her head to look at a blue dog at her feet, while she reaches down with her green left hand to gently touch its head. The dog’s head is turned to our right in profile, and it has a white eye, a slash of yellow for its mouth, and wavy black tail. The man is on our left and his body faces us as his head turns to our right in profile. He has a long snout, upright ears, a yellow eye, and spikes suggesting bristling fur. His open mouth reveals white fangs. He wears an ocean-blue tunic with a white triangular decoration on the chest, and a white skirt with an abstract, dark orange decoration. He holds a spear in his right arm, on our left, and a black and blue shield in the other. The people stand before a blue structure with a roof lined with triangles. The right corner of the building has a bright green rectangle next to a violet-purple column. More geometric blue and black shapes and what appears to be a white column jut out from that side, to our right. Part of a purple building with a curved, denim-blue roof and yellow foundation is visible on the left. A bright blue rectangle placed high on the wall, presumably a window, has a green and gold object hanging below a white scalloped shape at the top. The scene takes place in a landscape under a bright blue sky with flat, lime-green ground on the left and a hill topped with rounded green trees to the right. Mint and dark green or ochre-yellow trees are scattered across the ground along the bottom of the composition. The ground is brown in the left half and blue in the right half. Birds in gray, white, and shades of blue wander on the green hill and through the trees at the bottom, or perch in their branches. The artist has written “65/125” in the lower left corner beneath the printed image, and signed in lower right, “Romare Bearden,” both in pencil.
Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52, Circe Turns a Companion of Odysseus into a Swine, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms, 2013.142.2

Circe Turns a Companion of Odysseus into a Swine

Romare Bearden, Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52 · 1979 · color screenprint on wove Lana paper ·  Accession ID  2013.142.2