As a young child, Romare Bearden migrated with his family from North Carolina to New York as part of the Great Migration. His mother, Bessye, was a social activist and the New York editor for the Chicago Defender newspaper. After completing an undergraduate degree in education at New York University, Bearden studied drawing and painting under George Grosz at the Art Students League in New York. He also began publishing political cartoons for the National Urban League’s Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life, the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis, and the Baltimore Afro-American, before shifting focus more exclusively to painting and collage.

Bearden was a founding member of the New York–based African American artist collective Spiral (active 1963–1965), formed to discuss the role of the artist in the civil rights movement. His collages and photomontages from this period use found photographs and print media to engage broader visual culture references. They portray aspects of Black experience, including the Great Migration, jazz, blues, domestic life, and family.

In 1969 Bearden, along with artists Ernest Crichlow and Norman Lewis, founded the Cinque Gallery, dedicated to emerging African American artists. Bearden was also a founding member in 1970 of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, an organization that promoted the cultural achievements of African Americans.