In his monumental collage series Projections (1964), American artist Romare Bearden encapsulated a century of African-American strife. Builders, matriarchs, and blues guitarists coalesce in lyrical street scenes, juxtaposing their dilapidated homes with the sleek urban landmarks they helped construct. Bearden charted the transition from chattel to wage slavery, drawing loosely from his experience growing up in the Deep South, interviewing migrant workers, and organizing against white supremacy.

In a recent biography, Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist’s Reckoning with the South, historian Glenda Gilmore recounts the centrality of labor to the artist’s life story. Gilmore posits that many of Bearden’s best-known works, such as The Cotton Pickers (1941) and his dynamic Profile series, emerged not just from his working-class upbringing in North Carolina, but from his experience as a social worker in New York and as a black modernist during the civil rights era. Gilmore sets a timeline, critiques some striking artworks, and leaves the reader wondering why hardly anyone writes about art this succinctly.