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BEAUFORD DELANEY: SO SPLENDID A JOURNEY,

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Saturday, January 6, 2024

Ibiza Watercolors

A work on paper from Beauford's Clamart years will be auctioned on January 27, 2024. 

It is a watercolor and gouache that bears the name of the island of Ibiza above his signature.

Untitled (Ibiza)
 (1956) gouache and watercolor
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
 

Untitled (Ibiza) - detail
 (1956) gouache and watercolor
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
 

The announcement of the sale reminded me that Beauford created several watercolors when he traveled to Ibiza with his dear friend, Larry Calcagno, in 1956.  

While on the island, Beauford wrote to Henry Miller of the beauty and power of the Mediterranean and its surrounding, of the watercolors he was doing, and how he was "trying to say with my life the unsayable."

Here are images of other works he created during that trip.

Untitled (Ibiza)
 (1956) gouache and watercolor
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled: Abstract in Black, Calligraphic Lines with Red, Diptych
(ca. 1956) Gouache on wove paper
Signed lower left and lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image supplied by Levis Fine Art
 

In Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, biographer David Leeming indicated that Beauford and Calcagno were joined by James Baldwin, Leslie Schenk, and Baldwin's friend Arnold, and said that Baldwin wrote to a friend how important Beauford's relationship with Calcagno was.  

Beauford and his friends spent the month of August together, visiting Majorca as well as Ibiza. Leeming noted that the trip was the "real bright spot of the summer...". 

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