Solo Flight

The present work belongs to Bearden's important Jazz Series of twenty collages executed in 1979. The works were exhibited the following year at Bearden's dealer, Sheldon Ross Gallery in Birmingham, Michigan, with the present work gracing the cover of the catalogue. Of this series, a contemporary critic wrote: "Romare Bearden...has never produced a more satisfying body of work than the 20 'Jazz' pieces he made especially for Detroit...There is an easy fusion in these works between cutout images and painting. Bearden capitalizes on intervals between shapes and colors in much the same way musicians rely on pauses between notes...They are bits of the artist's experience, pieces of growing up in Harlem in the 1920s and knowing Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday and Jelly Roll Morton." (J.H. Colby, "Jazz, in shapes and colors," The Detroit News, April 13, 1980, p. 4-G)