Beauford Delaney From New York to Paris

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Beauford Delaney From New York to Paris
Beauford Delaney, Self-Portrait, Yaddo, 1950. Pastel, watercolor and charcoal on paper, 15 x 12 in. The Schonberger Family. Photograph Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY.



MINNEAPOLIS.- inneapolis—A groundbreaking exhibition featuring the colorful and engaging work of African-American artist Beauford Delaney goes on view this winter at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Titled “Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris,” this exhibition presents, for the first time, a visual progression of the artist’s transition from painting vibrant figurative compositions of New York City to abstract expressions of color and light in Paris. Organized by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, this unprecedented exhibition spans the artist’s most innovative and “lost” years between 1940 and 1968.

Forty-eight artworks from both European and American collections will be on view, including several works from Delaney’s earliest years in Paris that have never been exhibited. The significance of these early Parisian paintings will be thrown into high relief when displayed alongside representative works from Delaney’s New York figural work that precede them, and the incredibly subtle and meditative abstractions he made after 1960. The exhibition moves far beyond a stylistic analysis of the artist’s works to embrace a more expanded role of acquainting museum visitors with the artistic, societal, and personal contexts in New York and Paris that often found expression in Delaney’s paintings.

Delaney was fascinated and inspired by the urban landscape of New York; his works from that period express, in an American Modernist vein, not only the character of the city, but also his personal vision of equality, love, and respect among all people. Works such as Greene Street (1940) and Washington Square (1952) convey the energy of the bustling city through the sheer force of color and thrusting line. The people he befriended there, such as the actor Canada Lee (portrait, 1942), and author Henry Miller (portrait, 1944), were similarly charged with an energy that attracted the artist’s keen admiration. He appreciated their creative talent and recognized the important roles they played in the greater human drama.

Born in 1901 in Knoxville, Tennessee, Delaney migrated north in the 1920s, first to Boston and then to New York City, where he painted colorful, engaging canvasses that captured scenes of the urban landscape. His life and his art changed dramatically in 1953 when he moved to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1979. Within months of his arrival, Delaney’s artistic style shifted dramatically: he abandoned tightly constructed figurative compositions and embraced painting abstract expressionistic images. “Beauford Delaney” includes ten of the artist’s initial works painted in this style, including an untitled oil painting from 1954 that is the earliest known example of Delaney’s non-objective, abstract work from this period. During research for this exhibition, curator Sue Canterbury discovered that the work was painted on an unconventional surface—a raincoat—that an impoverished Delaney cut up for canvas.

Unfolding chronologically, the exhibition first addresses Delaney’s New York years as an American modernist (1940–1952), then proceeds to his early years in Paris (1953–1959), and concludes with his later Paris years, the period after 1960. Highlights of the exhibition include Delaney’s 1966 portrait of James Baldwin. Titled “The Sage Black,” the portrait captures the spiritual essence of the author as Delaney dissolves the boundaries between Abstract Expressionism and expressionistic portraiture. A portrait of a young James Baldwin also is on view in Delaney’s painting “Dark Rapture” from 1941. In addition, the exhibition includes a Georgia O’Keeffe pastel portrait of Delaney (c. 1940) (Minneapolis venue only); a 1941 caricature of Delaney by lifelong friend and New York Times illustrator Al Hirshfeld; photographs of the artist; and other items such as an Alfred Stieglitz inscription dedicated to Delaney in 1944.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Contributors to the catalogue include nationally renowned cultural critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who shares recollections of personal encounters with Delaney in Paris and the south of France; Ann E. Gibson, professor of art history at the University of Delaware, who explores Delaney’s work during his New York years; Patricia S. Canterbury, curator of this exhibition and assistant curator of paintings at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, who writes an essay on Delaney’s early transitional work in Paris; and Michael D. Plante, associate professor of art history at Tulane University, who discusses Delaney’s work in the context of the post-war school of Paris. The catalogue is distributed by the University of Washington Press and is available for purchase ($35.00) at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ Museum Shop, (612) 870–3100 or toll free (866) 632–7467, and online at www.artsmia.org/shop.

“Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris” opens November 21, 2004, and runs through February 20, 2005. This is a ticketed exhibition. General admission is $6.

This exhibition was organized by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and is made possible with support from the Henry Luce Foundation and The Judith Rothschild Foundation.

Generous support for this local presentation is provided by Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. and Target Corporation.

Exhibition Venues:

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts November 21, 2004–February 20, 2005

Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee April 8–June 25, 2005

Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina July 30–October 8, 2005

Philadelphia Museum of Art November 12, 2005–January 28, 2006

About The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Ranked among the











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