Spring Way

Romare Bearden, Spring Way, 1964, collage on paperboard, sheet and image: 6 ⁵⁄₈ x 9 ³⁄₈ in. (16.8 x 23.8 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1999.9

Artwork Details

Title: Spring Way
Artist: Romare Bearden
Date: 1964
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: sheet and image: 6 ⁵⁄₈ x 9 ³⁄₈ in. (16.8 x 23.8 cm.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design
Mediums: newsprint
Mediums Description: collage on paperboard
Subjects: Cityscape — street — alley
Cityscape — Pennsylvania — Pittsburgh
Cityscape — street — Spring Way
Architecture Exterior — domestic — house
Object Number: 1999.9
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1999.9

Artwork Description

In July 1963, a month before Martin Luther King’s historic march on Washington, D.C., Bearden and eleven other artists formed a group called Spiral to discuss how they could contribute to the civil rights movement. The moment was cathartic for Bearden, and he began making collages based on memories of black life in Pittsburgh, the rural South, and Harlem. He needed, he said, “to redefine the image of man in terms of the Negro experience.” The bleak and unforgiving sense of place in Spring Way, which was named for an alley near the Pittsburgh boardinghouse owned by Bearden’s grandmother, reflects the strong social conscience that inflected Bearden’s work anew in the 1960s.

Modern Masters: Midcentury Abstraction from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008