Beauford Delaney offered a penetrating, uncompromising view of himself in this self-portrait. The artist used bold, thick strokes of paint in bright colors to render a portrayal of vibrant yet haunting intensity—seemingly capturing his psyche as well as his appearance—which could allude to his struggle for personal and public acceptance as a gay black man.
The son of a Tennessee preacher, Delaney studied art in Boston before settling in 1929 in New York, where he befriended artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackson Pollock as well as writer James Baldwin, with whom he formed an especially deep, intellectual relationship of mutual inspiration and mentorship.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Purchased with funds provided by Alexander C. and Tillie S. Speyer Foundation; Samuel A. Marx Endowment
Reference Number
1991.27
Extended information about this artwork
Andrea D. Barnwell, “Self–Portrait,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1992): 200–2 (ill.).
Esther E. Grisham, Art Education 46, 4 (July 1993): 25–28, 37–40.
Chicago Reader, January 17, 1997, Section 2, 17 (ill., image reversed).
Andrea D. Barnwell and Kirsten P. Buick, “A Portfolio of Works by African American Artists Continuing the Dialogue: A Work in Progress,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999): 185.
Philippe Briet, ed., Tributary (New York: Edgewise Press, 1999), (ill.).
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 149 (ill.).
“Georgia O’Keeffe’s Beauford Delaney,” The Art Institute of Chicago Member Magazine (Spring 2019): 31 (ill.).
Newark Museum, Against the Odds: African–American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, Jan. 13–Apr. 15, 1990, cat. 32 (ill. pl. 25); Charleston, Gibbes Art Gallery, May 7–July 9, 1990; Chicago Public Library, Cultural Center, July 28–Sept. 29, 1990.
Art Institute of Chicago, In Their Own Right: Images of African Americans, Sept. 27, 1997–Jan. 11, 1998.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art of the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 15–Mar. 18, 2003.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris, Nov. 20, 2004–Feb. 20, 2005, cat. 5 (ill.).
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 37.
Atelier Dore, San Francisco; Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York City, by 1989 [lent to Newark Museum 1990; cat. published 1989]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1991.
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