Beauford Delaney’s Metamorphosis into Freedom
On view until June 21, 2021
Asheville Art Museum
Asheville, North Carolina
Featuring more than 40 paintings and works on paper, “Beauford Delaney’s Metamorphosis into Freedom” examines the career evolution of modern painter Beauford Delaney (Knoxville, TN 1901–1979 Paris, France) within the context of his 38-year friendship with writer James Baldwin (New York 1924-1987 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France).
The works in this exhibition bring into special focus Delaney’s experiments with abstraction sparked by the artist’s 1955 move to the Paris suburb of Clamart, as well as the ways that the artist and Baldwin’s ongoing intellectual exchange shaped one another’s creative output and worldview from their first meeting in 1940 until Delaney’s death in 1979.
[Image: Beauford Delaney, Yaddo, 1950, pastel on paper, 18 × 24 inches. Knoxville Museum of Art, 2017 purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve. © The Estate of Beauford Delaney, image Bruce Cole.]
