In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney
The Drawing Center, New York
May 30 – September 14, 2025
Self-Portrait, 1964
Watercolor and gouache on paper,
29.75 x 22.25 inches (75.6 x 56.5 cm)
Courtesy Ruth and Joe Fielden, Knoxville
Photo credit: Knoxville Museum of Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Charcoal of a Black Woman, 1929
Charcoal on laid paper
19 5/8 x 14 3/4 inches / 49.8 x 37.5 cm
19 1/4 x 14 inches / 48.9 x 35.6 cm sight size
Private Collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
James Baldwin, 1945
Pastel on paper, 23.5 in. x 18.5 inches
MacDowell, Gift of the Baldwin family to MacDowell (2018)
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Yaddo, 1950
Pastel on paper, 18 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the Knoxville Museum of Art
Image credit: Knoxville Museum of Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
The Drawing Center presents In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney, featuring works on paper by the American artist BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901–1979). The exhibition is the first comprehensive Delaney exhibition at a New York museum in over three decades, and the first-ever exhibition devoted to drawing—the medium that was central to his oeuvre.
Beauford Delaney holds a place in the history of American art of the postwar period that is challenging to define. Born in 1901 in Knoxville, Tennessee, he grew up in the segregated South and studied fine art at the Massachusetts Normal School in Boston in the late 1920s. By 1929, he had moved to New York, where he continued his artistic practice at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, producing realistic portraits and Cubist-inflected street scenes of the Greenwich Village neighborhood where he lived. In 1953, at the urging of his friend, James Baldwin, Beauford Delaney moved to Paris, the city where he would spend the rest of his life. In Paris, Delaney drew and painted portraits, while at the same time, he developed an all-over calligraphic abstract painting style. For two decades, he painted abstract and figurative works simultaneously, sometimes combining both languages by inserting barely visible figures into abstract compositions, or by working up backgrounds full of abstract incident that often competed with the fully realized portraits embedded within them. Beauford Delaney produced drawings from the beginning of his career in the early 1920s in Knoxville, until his mental illness prevented him from continuing in the early 1970s. Although he rarely drew preparatory sketches, his works on paper closely followed techniques and motifs he used in his paintings.
Central Park, 1950
Pastel on paper, 18 x 24 inches / 45.7 x 61 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Paris, 1953
Pastel on paper
19 x 24 1/2 inches / 48.3 x 62.2 cm
18 5/8 x 24 1/4 inches / 47.3 x 61.6 cm sight size
Private Collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Self-Portrait, 1962
Oil on canvas, 25 1/2″ x 21 1/4″ x 3/4″
Private Collection
Collection of halley harrisburg and Michael Rosenfeld
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Self-Portrait, 1970
Gouache on paper, 12 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Private Collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator,
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
For Beauford Delaney, drawing was both a sanctuary and a space for experimentation. Through his works on paper, he could explore ideas with intimacy and spontaneity, yet this vital area of his oeuvre has been largely overlooked. As a Black, queer artist who defied traditional art historical categorization, Beauford Delaney persistently interrogated his place within narratives that often excluded figures like himself. In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney marks New York's first major Beauford Delaney museum exhibition in over 30 years and the first ever focused on his drawings—a medium central to his artistic practice.
The exhibition features about 90 works on paper spanning key periods of his career, as well as works on canvas and an array of ephemera—documentary photographs, correspondence, exhibition brochures, and press clippings—that contextualize his unique artistic trajectory.
In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney is organized by Rebecca DiGiovanna, Assistant Curator and Laura Hoptman, Executive Director at The Drawing Center.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring contributions by the exhibition’s curators, Laura Hoptman, Executive Director and Rebecca DiGiovanni, Assistant Curator at The Drawing Center, as well as an essay by Jessica Lynne, art critic and founding editor of ARTS. Black.
THE DRAWING CENTER
35 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013
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