Throughout his long career, Beauford Delaney remained deeply devoted to his craft, developing his skill as a master colorist with a singular creative vision inspired by his travels, friends, and the lyrical and spontaneous rhythms of jazz. His prolific Paris period stands as the culmination of a lifelong exploration of light and color. In 1953, about three decades into his career, Delaney relocated from New York to Paris at the encouragement of friends including writer James Baldwin. There, he joined many Black American artists who sought refuge in the city in the post-war years during a period of great cultural upheaval in the United States.

In Paris, Delaney discovered a life that afforded him greater freedom to express himself with less concern for stigmas surrounding his race and sexuality: "Paris became his home and part of his world, but his Paris life was in a different register from his New York life," observed cultural historian Richard A. Long. "People from diverse domains were all still very dear to him, though more of his friends now were artists, critics, collectors, connoisseurs." [1]

During his Paris period, Delaney focused on two dominant modes of expression—portraiture and abstraction. "He continued to paint and draw portraits, but also moved away from representational art towards pure abstraction. His paintings became freer, looser, more expressive of joy, and more colorfully complex." [2] This stylistic evolution is demonstrated in the present untitled work on paper produced in 1960, several years following the artist's first solo exhibition in Europe. In this work, Delaney used an allover approach to create luminous spatial networks, emphasizing connectivity over a figure-ground relationship.

To create these compositions, Delaney perhaps drew inspiration from his studio window in Clamart, just outside of Paris, which Baldwin described as "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 of the sun departed." [3] Knoxville Museum of Art curator Stephen Wicks elaborated on this aesthetic phenomenon in his 2020 exhibition catalogue dedicated to the two friends: "Far from the well-defined color shapes that characterize his earlier work, Delaney's Clamart abstractions are marked by great depth and a broad and delicate color spectrum, from cool monochromatic washes to bright arrangements comprised of a multitude of encrusted hues." [4]

The abstract style Delaney developed in Paris is rooted in Tachisme, a movement that came to prominence in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by non-geometric abstraction produced through spontaneous brushwork, drips and expressive mark-making. Part of the larger movement of Art Informel, Tachisme is widely considered to be the European equivalent of American Abstract Expressionism. While Delaney's approach to the application of paint recalls in many ways the work of prominent Tachiste painters such as Jean Dubuffet and Sam Francis, Delaney's style distinguishes itself through its positioning of light and prismatic color as its central focus.

The 1960s marked a particularly prolific period in Delaney's career that saw the evolution of his abstract style toward bold calligraphic gestures against a richly colored ground. This approach is reminiscent of the gestural black mark-making in the allover paintings of legendary post-war American artist Willem de Kooning, a friend of Delaney's.

Delaney's vibrant abstract work returned to the Parisian audience in 2016, when his works were exhibited at Columbia Global Centers in Exposition Beauford Delaney (1901-1979): Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color. A review in The Brooklyn Rail by Joseph Nechvatal observed the powerful impact of the paintings: "there they are, these paintings of universal inner spirituality, offering us the chance to widen our focus and consider the warm swirling incontestable fundamentals of a person." [5] Delaney's contributions created a lasting legacy on contemporaneous and subsequent generations of artists and cultural figures throughout the twentieth century, including, perhaps most poignantly, Baldwin: "I learned about light from Beauford Delaney," James Baldwin recalled of his friend. "The light contained in every thing, in every surface, in every face." [6]

[1] Richard A. Long, “Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective,” Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1978

[2] Joseph Nechvatal, “Beauford Delaney: Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color,” The Brooklyn Rail, May 2016, https://brooklynrail.org/2016/05/artseen/beauford-delaney-resonance-of-form-and-vibrationnbspofnbspcolor

[3] James Baldwin quoted in Stephen C. Wicks, Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door, Knoxville, Tennessee, The Knoxville Museum of Art, 2020

[4] Stephen C. Wicks, Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin

[5] Joseph Nechvatal, "Beauford Delaney: Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color"

[6] James Baldwin, "Introduction to Exhibition of Beauford Delaney Opening December 4, 1964 at the Gallery Lambert," Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1978