Conjur Woman

Romare Bearden's collages are some of his most powerful and expressive works. Stylistically, they reference the Cubist works of Picasso and Braque, whom Bearden met in Paris in 1950, and the photomontages of the Berlin Dadaists whom Bearden was introduced to by his teacher, artist George Grosz, as well as African American folk collage. The subject matter, however, is all Bearden's, including references to his African American heritage and the black experience in the United States.

Bearden began making his collages around 1963, cutting images from popular magazines, combining them with colored papers, and adding paint or other media to weave the compositions together. He used photostats (early photocopies) to create an overall unity within his compositions and to produce large works that in many cases-including the AMAM's Conjur Woman-have the scale and impact of a painting.

After moving to the Antilles in 1973, Bearden's work frequently incorporated the brilliant colors of the Caribbean. The bright green of the AMAM collage, for ex ample, serves as a lush backdrop for a conjure woman-spelled "conjur" by Bearden-dressed in deep blue with a pink snake spiraling around her outstretched right arm. Bearden was fascinated by the conjure woman and her Caribbean counterpart, the Obeah woman-spiritual healers who were respected and feared for their traditional knowledge from Africa-and he depicted them throughout his career.