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oil paint canvas
Not currently on view
Museum purchase: The Katherine and Thomas Belk Acquisition Fund
Beauford Delaney was one of the most highly regarded African-American artists working with abstraction during the mid-twentieth century. Although he began his career in New York, he moved to Paris in 1953 seeking greater artistic and social freedom; he remained there until his death in 1979. In Paris he gained acclaim for his vivid, expressionistic portraits of friends and cultural figures including writer James Baldwin and singer Marian Anderson, as well his powerful, light-filled abstractions, like "Untitled." In a letter to his friend, author Henry Miller, Delany stated that when he worked, his aim was “to release everything—that is—include all in each stroke, every breath drawn; to release into the work our reaction to that which cannot be said or portrayed, but which is there in its inscrutable fashion.” Delaney poured all of himself into his art, a quality that is almost palpable in this dynamic canvas. Writing about Delaney’s paintings in 1962, artist and critic Paul Jenkins could easily have been referring to "Untitled": “The structure was there in each painting, but one senses more of a veil than a grid. It was as if he had cut hundreds of flowers and crushed them. Stems and all.”
Accession Number: 2017.7
Measurements:
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