Cover Illustrator of the Day: Romare Bearden

FORTUNE January 1968
Romare Bearden, Illustrator
Walter Allner, Art Director
Original caption: For this special issue, Fortune commissioned Negro artist Romare Bearden, fifty-three, to convey his own mood of urban life. What Bearden pieced together is the striking collage on the cover. Bearden knows the neighborhood signposts well; he grew up in Harlem. He serves as art director of the Harlem Cultural Council, which seeks to encourage promising Negroes in the arts. For Bearden, the assignment was reminiscent of an earlier one. In 1942, he painted a picture to accompany a Fortune article on an all too familiar subject: the Negro and discrimination.