Spring Way

Romare Bearden, Spring Way, 1964, collage on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1999.9
Copied 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
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
Mediums Description
collage on paperboard
Subjects
  • Architecture Exterior — domestic — house
  • Cityscape — street — Spring Way
  • Cityscape — Pennsylvania — Pittsburgh
  • Cityscape — street — alley
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