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Romare Bearden, Prelude to Troy, c. 1969
collagraph on paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Gift of Yvonne and Richard McCracken and Mary and Jerald Melberg
© Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

This image, which Bearden created both in collage and in print, is based on a painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York--Lucas Cranach's The Judgment of Paris, c. 1528. The collagraph (colla/collage; graph/print) process grows directly from collage. The printing surface used here was made from layers of cardboard onto which Bearden squeezed a stream of glue from a bottle to create globules that hardened when they dried. They are visible throughout the landscape behind the figures. The surface was then coated with a synthetic to resist the printing ink.

Copyright © National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.