Meet Romare Bearden. His friends called him Romie.

Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the 20th century, Romare Bearden had a prolific and distinguished career. Experimented with various mediums and styles, he’s best known for his signature technique of richly textured collages. Snippets from magazine photographs, foil, posters, and art reproductions were among his materials. He thought art should be both an individual expression and an agent of social change. Bearden understood the power of images and while working from snippets, he reclaimed images of African-Americans by removing them from their context in the dominant visual culture and placing them in his own creation.