Holiday reds and greens

Christmas is upon us and Kwanzaa begins immediately thereafter. Reds and greens (and black for Kwanzaa) are the hallmark colors of the season.

In celebration of the holidays, I'm bringing you two Beauford Delaney abstracts that are ablaze with red and green and accentuated with black.

Untitled: Abstract in Red, Green, Ochre and Black
(1962) Gouache on wove paper
Signed and dated lower right, Paris
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image supplied by Levis Fine Art Gallery

Untitled: Abstract
(1971) Oil on corrugated cardboard
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image supplied by Levis Fine Art Gallery

Les Amis wishes you and yours much love and joy during this most wonderful time of the year!

In Search of Purple

Yesterday morning, I awakened to the thought that I couldn't remember ever seeing a Beauford Delaney work in which the dominant color was purple.

Of course, there are numerous shades of purple, and of course, Beauford used purple as an accentuating color in scores of paintings.

But I was hard pressed to come up with a mental image of a painting or work on paper that "screamed purple."

So I set about looking at my digital catalog to see if I could find at least one.

I never did.

But here are some images of several works that came close - either Beauford painted a single large area with purple or he used this color as the dominant accent for the work.

 

Dante Pavone as Christ
(1948) Pastel on paper
23 ¼ x 19 ¾ inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Knoxville Museum of Art, purchase with funds provided by the KMA Collectors Circle with additional gifts from Barbara Apking, June and Rob Heller, Donna Kerr, Alexandra Rosen and Donald Cooney, Ted Smith and David Butler, Mimi and Milton Turner, John Cotham, Jan and Pete Crawford, Cathy and Mark Hill, Florence and Russell Johnston, John Z. C. Thomas, Donna and Terry Wertz, Jayne and Myron Ely, Sarah Stowers, Robin and Joe Ben Turner, and Jacqueline Wilson 

Mme du Closel
G. R. N’Namdi Gallery
(1964) Pastel on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator 

Untitled
(1960) Pastel on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Central Park
(1950) Oil on canvas
Image from Pomegranate Note Card
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator 

Portrait of Robert Tricoire
1969, Oil on canvas
65 x 54 cm; 25.6" x 21.2"
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Grievances from a Soul of Sorrow

Beauford's Untitled (1962-1964) was assigned Lot No. 81 for Black Art Auction's Fall Fine Art Sale on November 19, 2022. 

It sold for $53,125.

Untitled
(1962-1964) Gouache on paper
Signed and dated "Paris, 1964"
Inscribed: "for Amy(?) Erica + Tully, Paris August 20, 1962, with fond regards"
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

The date range for this work aroused my curiosity.  Beauford showed ten abstract gouaches in a 1964 Copenhagen exhibition called 10 American Negro Artists, and I wondered if this may have been one of them.

 Also, the online image of this work struck a chord in me. 

I found it to be particularly vibrant, and I wanted to do something special when I posted about it here.

Enter Marteena Mendelssohn, a junior at the American University of Paris (AUP) who is serving as the autumn intern for the Wells International Foundation. 

Marteena is a Creative Writing major and Film minor, and she has expressed interest in learning more about Beauford.

So, I invited her to have a look at some of the creative writing done by some of her intern predecessors (two of whom were also AUP students) and write some prose or poetry about this work on paper.

Find the resulting poem below.

Grievances from a Soul of Sorrow
by Marteena Mendelssohn

Let’s reconcile the belief that I is more than You. For you are who I am and you is I our truth. Inside of the tunnels of sorrow our truth holds light. In what we cannot see our spirits contain all the sight we need

                            To move forward

so we dig                               and we build                               and we move

with dark

bodies and light voices   that pave way into the black night blundering us into bits of bodies until our brown eyes turn into crimson blood on the backside of a painted canvas that’ll never see the day

            break

                                                Me

                                                                into the world of the unknown.

We tap into our souls and we make blood glimmer like sunshine. It’s not our light that bleeds into the darkness and unveils the parts

      You or I refuse to see, it is our faith in the light that allows us to be
                                                                                                                  u
                                                                                                                    s

so.

                               Take our light               take our truth

But don’t take us back to the starting line.

Beauford at Art Basel Miami 2022

Visitors to Art Basel Miami 2022 can revel in the splendor of Beauford's work! 

The Schoelkopf Gallery is displaying one of my favorite works on paper, Untitled (Grape Motif). This piece is being shown alongside works by other artists who the gallery describes as having ... reinvented conventional genres such as landscape and still life through new lenses...

Untitled
(1960) Pastel on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

See these works HERE. 

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery* is displaying thirteen of Beauford's paintings and works on paper. Created between 1952 and c. 1970, all but one of the works are from Beauford's Paris period. 

Two are portraits of Beauford's mother, Delia, and his friend, Bernard Hassell,

Portrait of Delia Delaney
(1964) Oil on canvas
Knoxville Museum of Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Portrait of Bernard Hassell
(c. 1970) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

and one is a figurative painting of an island. 

The rest are of the works are abstracts. 

See the entire selection HERE. 

Today is the last day to visit Art Basel Miami. 

You can find the Schoelkopf Gallery at Booth C2 and the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery at Booth G1. 

Art Basel | Miami Beach
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
Website: https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach/at-the-show

*Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney.