Beauford's "Man with Medallion" Featured in L.A. Exhibition

Beauford's Portrait of a Young Man (aka Man with Medallion) is being featured in an extraordinary exhibition entitled Pictures Girls Make: Portraiture.

Untitled (Portrait of a Man) (aka Man with Medallion)
(c. 1965) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Blum & Poe - an art gallery with exhibition spaces in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo - is presenting Pictures Girls Make in Los Angeles. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, this show bringing together over fifty artists from around the world, spanning the early nineteenth century until today. Moving beyond binary thinking, it strives to emphasize the diversity of subjects, complexities of biography, and array of individual characters that artists have been able to capture through various modes of portrait making.

Pictures Girls Make focuses largely on portraits created by women as it emphasizes the fact that portraiture was and is made by painters of every possible race, ethnicity, caste, and sexuality, as well as by gender-fluid, non-binary artists. It addresses the trend catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter movement for the art market, alongside museums, to embrace Black artists over the past few years, and examines this trend's focus on "new" artists of color while "egregiously" ignoring the complex histories of artists of color. 

The exhibition pays homage to this history by featuring Portrait of a Woman (date unknown) by Joshua Johnson (1763-1824), the earliest known African American professional artist, and Portrait of a Creole Gentleman (circa nineteenth century) by an unknown artist of the Louisiana School as a gesture that gives context to a range of twentieth and twenty-first-century artists of color who have taken up the portraitist mantle.  It also features works by multiple 20th- and 21st-century African-American and African artists, including Beauford's Man with Medallion.

To view an extraordinary photo of Untitled (Portrait of a Man) (aka Man with Medallion) as shown in the exhibition, click HERE. (This photo is on Facebook, so you may need to sign in to view it.)

 Pictures Girls Make: Portraiture will be on display through October 21, 2023.