55

Beauford Delaney

(1901-1979)

Ibiza.

Watercolor on heavy wove paper, 1956.
Signed, titled and dated ‘56 in ball point pen and ink, lower right.
18 x 11 3/4 in. (45.7 x 29.8 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    The estate of the artist
    Thence by descent, Ogust Delaney Stewart, Knoxville.
    Private collection, New York.
    Ms. Ogust Delaney Stewart was the artist's niece.
  • Exhibited:
    Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, November 21, 2004 – February 20, 2005.

    Illustrated:
    Patricia Canterbury, Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris, fig. 37, pp. 56-57.
  • Notes:
    This dynamic, vivid abstraction is an excellent example from Beauford Delaney's important body of work on paper. In the winter of 1955, Delaney moved out of his hotel studio to an apartment in the Paris suburb of Clamart where he enjoyed more space and light to work. Delaney had solo exhibitions at the Galerie Prismes in both May and June of 1956 before traveling to Ibiza, Spain in August. This densely layered composition displays Delaney's bolder experimentation in the mid-1950s as he focused on the expressiveness of light with color.

    In her exhibition catalogue, curator Patricia Canterbury uses this work on paper to illustrate a breakthrough in Delaney's mid-1950s abstraction: "It is through a particular watercolor from Delaney's interlude in Ibiza, Spain with artist/friend Larry Calcagno in August, 1956 that it is possible to discern a compositional approach that would figure in several of Delaney's paintings over the next year. In Ibiza, a spectrum of pastel hues move upward in graduated masses over an underlying structural grid." On a particularly heavy rag paper, with its own "mottling", here Delaney deftly uses the paper surface to accentuate its depth. Canterbury continues: "The color values of the pigments and Delaney's placement of them achieve an optical tension between surface and distance that draws our attention to the work's very center. This sensation was to become a hallmark of the artist's Non-Objective Paris paintings on canvas, paper and paperboard." Leeming p. 130; Canterbury pp. 56-57.
  • Condition:
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April 2, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
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