Folk Musicians 1941-42

I like this painting because in incorporates a lot of rich browns and blues suggesting "the blues" the African American folk music. Bearden was actually influenced by the Social Realists of the Great Depression, along with the Mexican Muralists such as Diego Rivera, who was well-established in New York City. As a Social Realists, he among many others were influenced by the art and politics of Soviet Russia, and focused on the working class, the poor, the masses, and folk culture as their subjects. He was one of the many realists that seeked to ignite progressive social change. Bearden turned to the folk music and Southern folk culture that he knew from his youth. He flattened the pictorial space and created figures with Cubist block-like forms that overlap and are compressed while simultaneously, enlarging the trio's hands to indicate their humble working origins. The brick wall behind the blues musicians serves to move them into our picture plane, so that we can more closely observe their faces and other details. Bearden is praised for his honesty and directness.