Following the advice of his first art teacher, Lloyd Branson, Beauford Delaney left Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1923 to pursue his education in Boston. In 1929 he moved from Boston to New York; there he exhibited portraits at the Whitney Studio Galleries and at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library and supported himself by working as a janitor at night. Although he primarily executed portraits, by 1941 he was painting street scenes of Greenwich Village and experimenting with non-objective painting and light effects. In 1953 Delaney left the United States for Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. By 1960 museums and galleries throughout Europe were exhibiting his abstract compositions.

Unlike the flatly painted portraits of friends and family Delaney executed throughout his career, this self-portrait stands out for its expressionistic brushwork and intense feeling. Self-Portrait––with its richly textured layers of reds, greens, yellows, and blues––is clearly informed by the artist’s interest in abstraction. It also reveals the profound discomfort and inner struggles that increasingly troubled and eventually overwhelmed him. According to a recent biography based on his journals, painting for Delaney was a way to “remember and confront the pain,” and “expressionistic” portraits served as “defenses against the inner demons.” 9 These included his increasingly strong conviction that racism was impeding his career, that his patrons would cease to support him if they knew he had performed menial jobs, and that he would be further condemned for his homosexuality––the latter fear prompted to no small degree by the fact that he was the son of a minister. The number of masks he wore to conceal these concerns involved a psychological effort that, as the Art Institute’s self-portrait poignantly suggests, took a significant toll. 10 (ADB)