Skip to content
Back to top Back to Exhibitions«
Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue

September 5 – November 2, 2024


1 of 35
Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Double Portrait, 1974 coll...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Double Portrait, 1974
collage of various papers with watercolor and tape on Masonite
36 x 48 inches / 91.4 x 121.9 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Untitled, 1963 collage of...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Untitled, 1963
collage of various papers on paper
11 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches / 28.6 x 33.7 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Profile/Part II,...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Profile/Part II, The Thirties: Mr. Blues Leaves a Calling Card, 1981
collage of various papers with acrylic and graphite on Masonite
8 1/8 x 17 1/2 inches / 20.6 x 44.5 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Corridor Figure with Feath...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Corridor Figure with Feathers, 1986
collage of various papers with ink and watercolor on Masonite
13 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches / 35.2 x 30.2 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Of the Blues: New...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Of the Blues: New Orleans Farewell, 1974
collage of various papers with acrylic on Masonite
43 3/8 x 49 1/2 inches / 110.2 x 125.7 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Encore, 1980 coll...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Encore, 1980
collage of various papers with acrylic on Masonite
18 x 13 7/8 inches / 45.7 x 35.2 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Of the Blues: Int...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Of the Blues: Intermission Still-Life, Instruments of Dixieland, 1974
collage of various papers with acrylic and lacquer on Masonite
28 x 22 inches / 71.1 x 55.9 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Exploding Tongues - Untied...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Exploding Tongues - Untied Scape, 1993
collage of various papers on Masonite
35 5/8 x 47 5/8 inches / 90.5 x 121 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) For B.B. - Of Swimming in...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
For B.B. - Of Swimming in Lakes and Rivers, 1985
collage of various papers on paper
22 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches / 56.5 x 76.8 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Volcano Dream-Destruction...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Volcano Dream-Destruction Dream, 1993
collage of various papers with watercolor, ink and graphite
28 5/8 x 40 1/8 inches / 72.7 x 101.9 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Gerent, 1971 collage of va...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Gerent, 1971
collage of various papers with tape, acrylic and graphite on Bristol paper
25 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches / 64.8 x 52.1 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Tidings II, 1972...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Tidings II, 1972
collage of various papers and fabric on Masonite
13 5/8 x 22 inches / 34.6 x 55.9 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Blue Shade, 1972...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Blue Shade, 1972
collage of various papers and fabric on Masonite
9 3/8 x 14 inches / 23.8 x 35.6 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Memories, 1970 co...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Memories, 1970
collage of various papers with acrylic and graphite on plywood
14 x 19 3/4 inches / 35.6 x 50.2 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Two Women, 1967 c...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Two Women, 1967
collage of various papers with acrylic on canvas
44 x 56 inches / 111.8 x 142.2 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Figure with Folded Arms, 1...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Figure with Folded Arms, 1973–74
collage of various papers with watercolor and tape on Masonite
48 x 36 inches / 121.9 x 91.4 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Formal Informal Double Por...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Formal Informal Double Portrait, 1976
collage of various papers with watercolor on Masonite
35 x 47 3/4 inches / 88.9 x 121.3 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Giza, 1978–82 collag...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Giza, 1978–82
collage of various papers with ink on paper
15 1/4 x 22 1/4 inches / 38.4 x 56.5 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) PC 31, 1963 collage of var...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
PC 31, 1963
collage of various papers with acrylic on paper
11 3/8 x 17 1/4 inches / 28.9 x 43.8 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Venice-Ravenflag, 1978&nda...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Venice-Ravenflag, 1978–82
collage of various papers with watercolor on paper
17 1/2 x 22 3/4 inches / 44.5 x 57.8 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Birth-Death Dream, 1993 co...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Birth-Death Dream, 1993
collage of various papers with acrylic, ink and graphite
38 1/8 x 50 inches / 96.8 x 127 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Constellation of...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Constellation of the Archer, 1972
collage of various papers with acrylic on Masonite laid on panel
36 x 40 5/8 inches / 91.4 x 103.2 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Aphrodite, 1973 c...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Aphrodite, 1973
collage of various papers with acrylic, ink and graphite on Masonite
23 7/8 x 17 7/8 inches / 60.6 x 45.4 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Inscription at th...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Inscription at the City of Brass, 1972
collage of various papers and fabric with acrylic on Masonite
40 7/8 x 36 inches / 103.8 x 91.4 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Light Is Faster Than Sound...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Light Is Faster Than Sound, 1987–88
collage of various papers with paint on Masonite
35 x 47 5/8 inches / 88.9 x 121 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Fish Fry, 1967 co...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Fish Fry, 1967
collage of various papers on paper board
29 7/8 x 39 7/8 inches / 75.9 x 101.3 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Magic Snakes and Family Di...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Magic Snakes and Family Diary, 1991
collage of various papers with ink and graphite on Masonite
35 1/2 x 60 inches / 90.2 x 152.4 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Profile/Part I, T...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Profile/Part I, The Twenties: Mecklenburg County, Liza in High Cotton, 1977–78
collage of various papers and fabric with acrylic, watercolor, ink and graphite on Masonite
17 3/8 x 32 7/8 inches / 44.1 x 83.5 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Ground Breaking T...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Ground Breaking Time-North Carolina, 1971
collage of various papers and aluminum foil on paperboard mounted on plywood
14 3/4 x 19 1/8 inches / 37.5 x 48.6 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Untitled (Dancers), 1963 c...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Untitled (Dancers), 1963
collage of various papers with ink and watercolor on paper
15 3/8 x 22 1/4 inches / 39.1 x 56.5 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) The Tidings, c.19...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
The Tidings, c.1964
collage of various papers on paperboard
7 1/8 x 8 7/8 inches / 18.1 x 22.5 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) Baptism, 1964 col...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
Baptism, 1964
collage of various papers on paperboard
10 x 6 1/2 inches / 25.4 x 16.5 cm
signed

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) La Primavera, 196...

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
La Primavera, 1964
collage of various papers and fabric on paperboard
8 3/8 x 13 1/8 inches / 21.3 x 33.3 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Subterran Explosion, 1962...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Subterran Explosion, 1962
collage of various papers with ink and watercolor on paper
10 7/8 x 15 inches / 27.6 x 38.1 cm
signed

Nancy Grossman (b.1940) Untitled, 1963 collage of...

Nancy Grossman (b.1940)
Untitled, 1963
collage of various papers with ink and watercolor on paper
11 1/4 x 15 1/2 inches / 28.6 x 39.4 cm
signed



Artists


Press


Press Release

Collage comes the closest to reality. It is the only way to make the disparate and ill-fitting parts of a life, an identity, an elegantly seamless experience. It satisfies both the urgent and the substantive thirst.[1]
—Nancy Grossman

I feel that when some photographic detail, such as a hand or an eye, is taken out of its original context and is fractured and integrated into a different space and form configuration, it acquires a plastic quality it did not have in the original photograph…Art, it must be remembered, is artifice, or a creative undertaking, the primary function of which is to add to our existing conception of reality.[2]
—Romare Bearden

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 7, 5:00-8:00PM

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue, an exhibition focused on the artistic exchange between two leading innovators of the medium. Though Bearden was a generation older than Grossman, the artists initiated their collage practices within a year of each other—Grossman in 1962 and Bearden in 1963—and shared crucial developments in their technique through a continuous dialogue. Brought together through the cultural milieu fostered by their dealer at the time, Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, the two artists remained close friends until Bearden's death, forging a vital rapport that shaped their practices and lives.

The works presented in Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue reveal surprising alignments between the artists’ collage oeuvres despite divergent subject matter and stylistic approaches. Both artists repurposed excerpts from previous artworks into material for new collages and applied various pigments (ink, acrylic, watercolor) to elements of many works in order to energize the composition. Where Bearden’s collages explore memory and autobiography within larger cultural narratives, Grossman’s collages are deeply psychological explorations of the human condition expressed via an open-ended material experimentation.

Bearden and Grossman’s works were shown together in group exhibitions at Cordier & Ekstrom as well as institutional venues beginning in the late 1960s, around the time that their friendship blossomed. This trend continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, most notably in the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) exhibition Collages: Selections from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden organized by Howard Fox, which toured the country from 1978–82. The two artists nurtured their friendship through regular studio visits, enthusiastic support of each other’s exhibitions, and numerous events related to their shared social circles. Grossman recalls long conversations with Bearden about art, food, and life unfolding during their studio visits, and she cherished the correspondence she received from him.

A particularly formative exchange between the two artists occurred shortly after 1967, when Bearden began sharing a studio with Jack Schindler, a commercial designer. Bearden had been experimenting with various supports for his new body of collage works, and Schindler suggested he use Masonite to mitigate the warping that occurred as the adhesive dried. Grossman had encountered a similar issue with her own collages around this time, and Bearden had consulted conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding various treatments to stabilize their images. The solution arrived one day in the form of a rain-spotted note taped to Grossman’s mailbox: in Bearden’s hand, it read, “Glue paper to the back.” Sure enough, after adhering papers to the verso in equal weight to the materials on the front, both sides of the Masonite shrunk in sync and the surface remained flat.

Years later, Grossman honored Bearden and his technical revelation through the incorporation of his note into her complexly layered, large-scale collage Exploding Tongues - Untied Scape (1993), which features prominently in Collage in Dialogue. Both Grossman and Bearden maintained a vast cache of found and collected paper materials that held deeply personal significance to them, and Grossman’s retention of Bearden’s note over twenty-six years is emblematic of the artists’ accumulative tendencies. Exploding Tongues - Untied Scape is titled after experimental filmmaker Marlon Riggs’ landmark video essay dedicated to Black gay love, Tongues Untied (1989)—an apt tribute given the repeated presence of labels from sardine tins that were gifted to Grossman from her partner, the art historian Arlene Raven, rendering the collage a poignant, recombinant expression of love and friendship.

Featuring thirty-five works dating from 1962 to 1993, Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue constitutes a concise survey of the collage oeuvres of both artists. Major examples from Bearden’s Of the Blues series, a group of collages referencing specific narratives from the history of blues and jazz, will be featured alongside portrayals of Black culture in the locations that had the greatest impact on his life, namely New York City, Pittsburgh, and North Carolina. The Grossman collages on view fall roughly into two categories: abstracted landscapes and renditions of the figure. The latter comprise featureless, masculine forms posed in positions of restraint, and directly relate to her iconic leatherbound head sculptures, as she repurposed the patterns used to cut the leather into collage media. Grossman’s “landscapes” typically take the form of horizontally oriented, allover compositions with varying levels of formal density and often bear references to her personal life in the form of old maps, tickets, letters, and photos. A fractured quality runs throughout both artists’ collage oeuvres; seams, tears, and disjointed scales between elements are emphasized, rather than ameliorated, transmuting the dissonance of lived existence into a new, harmonious whole.

Where the structures of Bearden’s collages are informed by his deep, comprehensive knowledge of Western art history—especially the Old Masters and traditional African material culture—Grossman’s compositions are direct descendants of modernism, often evoking abstract expressionist landscapes or surrealist renditions of the figure. Notably, both artists began their careers as painters and evolved into multimedia practices in pursuit of a truer vision of their lived experience. Indeed, the formal relationship between their work was perhaps best summarized by the artist Nayland Blake in the catalogue for Grossman’s 2012 career retrospective, when he wrote that Bearden’s collages create “poems of the black body and urban space. Grossman’s collages start from a similar place but veer off in the direction of a planar mosaic. While Bearden appeals to our urge to reconfigure the fragmented space into narrative… [Grossman’s] collages are not windows to be seen through, even when she presents imagery of a landscape; we are meant to see the land itself as skin, creased and permeable.”[3]

Augmenting the artworks on view in Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue will be a vitrine dedicated to archival materials featuring correspondence, exhibition ephemera, and personal photos as well as an illustrated map charting the locales Bearden and Grossman frequented throughout the decades, providing illuminating context to these artists’ enduring friendship.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has championed the work of Romare Bearden and Nancy Grossman for over thirty years, featuring both artists in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Romare Bearden & Nancy Grossman: Collage in Dialogue is the third exhibition the gallery has dedicated to Romare Bearden, after Fractured Tales: Intimate Collages (2006), for which a catalogue was published, and the critically acclaimed Romare Bearden (1911–1988): COLLAGE, A Centennial Celebration (2011). After taking on representation of Nancy Grossman in 1997, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery mounted five solo exhibitions: Loud Whispers, Four Decades of Assemblage, Collage, and Sculpture (2001), which was accompanied by a catalogue publishing new scholarship by Lowery Stokes Sims; Drawings (2007); Combustion Scapes (2011); The Edge of Always (2014); and My Body (2022).



[1] Nancy Grossman, artist statement for It’s Only a Paper Moon: The Universe as Collage, Shirley Fiterman Gallery, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, August 16 – September 28, 1994.
[2] Romare Bearden, “Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings,” Leonardo 2 (January 1969), 17-18.
[3] Nayland Blake, “Misrecognized,” in Ian Berry, ed. Nancy Grossman: Touch Life Diary, exh. cat. (Saratoga Springs, NY: The Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, 2012), 106