The Fall of Troy

1979

Romare Bearden

Associated Names
Romare Bearden

Artist, American, 1911 - 1988

Hugh MacKay’s Atelier 52

Printer

This print shows a series of geometric shapes and lines creating an abstract cityscape along a blue waterway. In the background, there are jagged, flame-like orange and red shapes on the top of teal and gray buildings with towers and spires. In front of the buildings is an expanse of bright blue water, on top of which are boats with tall sails and undulating green lines suggesting waves. There are black figures that look like human silhouettes standing on a purple rectangle that crosses over the water. On the right of the print is an angular white horse with blue lines across its body. In the green sky is an orange circular shape.
This object’s media is not available for download. Contact us about image usage.

Romare Bearden mined a wide range of sources: the Bible, the writings of French satirist François Rabelais, his childhood memories of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, the people and streets of Harlem, the epic poems of Homer, and more. He revisited many of these themes time and time again. Thus he made ink drawings and watercolors inspired by Homer’s Iliad in the 1940s, and a series of twenty collages based on The Odyssey in 1977.

Bearden’s collages drew strong praise when they were exhibited at the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery in New York’s Upper East Side in the spring of 1977, and he went on to make watercolor versions around the same time. About two years later, he translated six of the collage compositions into screenprints, which were published as the Odysseus Suite in 1979.

Not on view See artworks now on view

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    color screenprint on wove Lana paper

  • Credit Line

    Purchased as the Gift of Richard A. Simms

  • Dimensions

    image: 45.72 × 60.64 cm (18 × 23 7/8 in.)
    sheet: 55.25 × 73.98 cm (21 3/4 × 29 1/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    2013.142.1

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Bill Hodges, NY); gift to NGA, 2013

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2016

  • REMIX: Themes & Variations in African-American Art, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, 2016, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1992

  • Gelburd, Gail and Alex Rosenberg. A Graphic Odyssey: Romare Bearden as Printmaker. Exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

2016

  • REMIX: Themes & Variations in African-American Art. Exh. cat. Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, 2016: 10-11, 45, fig. 1.

Inscriptions

lower left in graphite: 65/125; lower right in graphite: Romare Bearden; lower right verso in graphite by unknown hand: Fall of Troy / X BEA-1

Markings

blindstamp: HMK (for printer Mohammad Omer Khalil, New York)

Watermarks

LANA

Wikidata ID

Q77006206

You may be interested in

Loading Results