RICHMOND, VA.- “This monumental collage painting is a landmark addition to our collection,” said Alex Nyerges, VMFA Director. “Three Folk Musicians bolsters our effort to represent a diverse range of cultures in our galleries and allows us to explore a full range of American stories with rich context and a broad eye.”

After working in mixed media in the 1940s, Bearden started experimenting with collage techniques in the late 1950s, but he did not begin making the brightly colored compositions depicting African American life, for which he has become best known, until 1963. That same year, he and a group of African American artists formed a collective known as Spiral to discuss their role in the civil rights movement. Their first meeting took place just one month before they attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.

Incorporating hand-painted papers and photographs torn from magazines, Bearden’s collages of this period present complex images of African American life from multiple perspectives. As a result, they are often understood in the context of African American art and are placed in a lineage from Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage from the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary artists like Wangechi Mutu and Mickalene Thomas. However, Bearden was also engaging with the assemblage and found imagery techniques that he shared with many artists of his generation, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. The initial installation of Three Folk Musicians at VMFA will therefore take place in a gallery that features important works of pop art to place Bearden’s work within the larger context of American art in the 1960s.

Scholars have identified the setting of Three Folk Musicians as the artist’s native Mecklenburg County, N.C. According to Bearden, the work also pays homage to a scene he often witnessed in his grandmother’s boarding house that he visited in Pittsburgh: “After supper, the boarders would sit in front of the house and talk, or play checkers, or plunk out ‘down home music’ on their guitars.”

“Three Folk Musicians demonstrates how Bearden created visual correspondence for rhythm, syncopation, improvisation, and other musical sensibilities,” said Dr. Michael R. Taylor, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education. “It thus honors the jazz and blues music that inspired African American artists – and modernists in general.”