Circe Turns a Companion of Odysseus into a Swine

1979

Romare Bearden

Artist, American, 1911 - 1988

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.
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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    color screenprint on wove Lana paper

  • Credit Line

    Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms

  • Dimensions

    image: 44.45 × 60.01 cm (17 1/2 × 23 5/8 in.)
    sheet: 55.88 × 75.57 cm (22 × 29 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    2013.142.2


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Bill Hodges, NY); gift to NGA, 2013

Associated Names

Bibliography

1992

  • Gelburd, Gail and Alex Rosenberg. A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker. Exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992: 47.

Inscriptions

lower left in graphite: 65/125; lower right in graphite: Romare Bearden; lower right verso in graphite by unknown hand: Circe turns his / Companions Into / Swine / X BEA-4

Markings

blindstamp: HMK (for printer Mohammad Omer Khalil, New York)

Watermarks

LANA

Wikidata ID

Q77006208


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