BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901 - 1979)
Untitled.

Gouache, watercolor and charcoal on wove paper, circa 1956. 610x406 mm; 24x16 inches. With stamped holes and spiral-binding preforations down the left edge. Estate ink stamped on the verso.

Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent, Ogust Delaney Stewart, Knoxville; private collection, New York. Ms. Ogust Delaney Stewart was the artist's niece.

Exhibited: Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, November 21, 2004 – February 20, 2005, Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee, April 16 – June 25, 2005, Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina, July 30 – October 8, 2005 and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 13, 2005–January 29, 2006.

Illustrated: Patricia Canterbury, Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris, fig. 16, p. 47.

This dynamic and vivid abstraction is an excellent example from Beauford Delaney's important body of work on paper. It was likely made during Delaney's third year in Paris. In the winter of 1955, Delaney moved out of his hotel studio to an apartment in the suburb of Clamart - there he enjoyed more space and light to work. This densely layered composition displays Delaney's bolder experimentation in the mid-1950s as he simplified his abstraction and focused on the expressiveness of color. Delaney had solo exhibitions at the Galerie Prismes in both May and June of 1956 and later traveled to Ibiza, Spain in August. Leeming p. 130; Canterbury p. 36.