25 Facts About Beauford Delaney

Beauford Delaney was an American modernist painter.

Beauford Delaney is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950s.

Beauford Delaney was born December 30,1901, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Beauford Delaney was the eighth of ten children, only four of whom survived into adulthood.

Beauford Delaney learned what he called the "essentials" of classical technique.

Commendably, Beauford Delaney established himself as a well known part of the bohemianism of the art scene of the period.

Beauford Delaney's friends included the "poet laureate" of the period, Countee Cullen, artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and writer Henry Miller, among many others.

Beauford Delaney became the "spiritual father" of the young writer James Baldwin.

When he traveled to Harlem to visit his African-American friends and colleagues, Beauford Delaney made efforts to ensure that they knew little of his other social life in Greenwich Village.

Beauford Delaney feared that many of his Harlem friends would be uncomfortable or repelled by his homosexuality.

Beauford Delaney had "a third life" centered on questions concerning the aesthetics and development of modernism in Europe and the United States; primarily influenced by the ideas of his friends, photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the cubist artist Stuart Davis, and the paintings of the European modernists and their predecessors like Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Van Gogh.

Beauford Delaney was pleased to participate in a number of black artists exhibitions with fellow artists like Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Selma Burke, Richmond Barthe, Norman Lewis, and his brother Joseph Delaney.

In 1953, at the age of 52, and just as the center of the art world was shifting to New York, Beauford Delaney left New York for Paris.

Beauford Delaney's drive to continuously paint resulted in him using his raincoat when he was out of canvas, "Untitled, 1954" is an oil on raincoat fragment.

Beauford Delaney has been menaced more than any other man I know by his social circumstances and by all the emotional and psychological stratagems he has been forced to use to survive; and, more than any other man I know, he has transcended both the inner and outer darkness.

Beauford Delaney returned briefly to the United States in 1969 to see his family, dogged by mental illness.

Shortly after his return to Paris in January 1970, Beauford Delaney began to display early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Beauford Delaney died in Paris while at St Anne's on March 26,1979.

Charles Boggs handled Beauford Delaney's will, written on a scrap of paper, in which Beauford Delaney had requested that he be buried in Potter's Field.

The darkness of Beauford Delaney's beginnings, in Tennessee, many years ago, was a black-blue midnight indeed, opaque and full of sorrow.

Beauford Delaney became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion.

Beauford Delaney's work has now been exhibited by, among others, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museums, Art Institute of Chicago, Knoxville Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Newark Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Beauford Delaney's work has been exhibited by a number of galleries, including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery and the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York City.

In 2009, while researching an article on African-American gravesites in Paris, freelance writer Monique Y Wells learned that Delaney was buried in an unmarked grave at the Cemetery of Thiais and that his remains would be moved to a common grave by the end of the year if the "concession" on his grave was not renewed.

Friends of Beauford Delaney raised the sum required, and Wells paid the fee to the cemetery to preserve Beauford Delaney's resting place.