Enduring Voices Catalogue (6-21-23) - Flipbook - Page 17
Beauford
DELANEY
(1901-1979)
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a Methodist minister and
a mother who was a former slave, Beauford Delaney is best known
for his portraits and New York City street and jazz club scenes
painted during the Harlem Renaissance of the ‘30s and ‘40s, and
then later in life for his abstract expressionism work in Paris.
Building on his experience as a sign painter in Knoxville and
informal study in Boston, Delaney arrived in New York City in
1929 during the apex of the Harlem Renaissance — which was
also during the start of the Great Depression. Sleeping on park
benches, Delaney sought out opportunities to develop a career
in art, working as a guard at the Whitney Museum of American
Art to earn studio space and a place to live. With a studio in
Greenwich Village, Delaney became part of a gay bohemian circle
of white friends; however, his Christian upbringing and fear of
rejection among his Harlem friends led him to keep his sexuality
private.
Moving to Paris in 1953, Delaney incorporated a dramatic stylistic
shift from figurative compositions to abstract expressionist
studies of color and light. Despite the acclaim his Parisian works
now receive, Delaney struggled at the time to find the same
level of success in Paris that he had achieved in New York City.
Heavy drinking and eventually Alzheimer’s disease led to him
being committed in 1975 to St. Anne’s Hospital, and he died at St.
Anne’s four years later.
BEAUFORD DELANEY
FIGURATIVE AND ABSTRACT ART
The Delaney is our most recent acquisition. Susan
came to him as a member of the Virginia Museum
of Fine Arts and Chrysler Museum of Art Collection
Committees. Both institutions have great larger and
more important Delaneys, but this one has its power.
And then with David’s interest in early sculpture, this
subject of an African Makonde figure was compelling.
We tend to acquire pieces that attract us visually,
and we have everything from abstract paintings to
very realistic imagery. Mother said, “I don’t see how
you can like both of them.” But you can! As long as
there is artistic value, we like it. What spurred our
interest in African American art is that there are a lot
of different media and diverse styles there.
–Susan S. and David R. Goode
Expatriate? It appears to me that in order
to be an expatriate one has to be, in some
manner, driven from one’s fatherland, from
one’s native land.
When I left the United States during the 1950s,
no such condition was left behind. One must
belong before one may then not belong. I belong
here in Paris; I am able to realize myself here.
I am no expatriate.
—Beauford Delaney
Interesting Delaney Fact:
Driven to paint, Beauford Delaney often used any surface available, as seen in his ”Untitled 1954” work of oil on a fragment of raincoat.
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