Object Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Delaney, Beauford |
Title |
Untitled |
Medium |
Watercolor on paper |
Date |
1960 |
Description |
Beauford Delaney (Knoxville 1901-1979 Paris) Untitled, 1960 Watercolor on paper 26 x 19 3/4 inches Knoxville Museum of Art, 2014 purchase with funds provided by Brenda & Larry Thompson After moving to the Paris suburb of Clamart in 1955, Beauford Delaney delved deeper into expressive abstraction rendered in oil on canvas and watercolor. This composition is unusual for Delaney in that it departs from his usual practice of filling the entire painting surface by leaving the central imagery framed by a wide margin of blank paper. One of writer James Baldwin's recollections of Delaney may help explain this unusual format: There was a window in Beauford's house in Clamart before which we often sat--late at night, early in the morning, at noon. This window looked out on a garden; or, rather, it would have looked out at a garden if it had not been for the leaves and branches of a large tree which pressed directly against the window. Everything one saw from this window, then, was filtered through these leaves. And this window was a kind of universe, moaning and wailing when it rained, black and bitter when it thundered, hesitant and delicate with the first light of morning, and as blue as the blues when the last light of sun departed. Well, that life, that light, that miracle, are what I began to see in Beauford's paintings, and this light began to stretch back for me over all the time we had known each other, and over much more time than that, and this light held the power to illuminate, even to redeem and reconcile and heal. - James Baldwin, "Introduction to Exhibition of Beauford Delaney Opening," Gallery Lambert, December 4, 1964 |
Catalog Number |
2014.12.01 |
Search Terms |
Watercolors Paper Paintings Abstract paintings Abstract works LBGTQ+ Artist |
Credit line |
purchase with funds provided by Brenda and Larry Thompson |