The art and life of one of American modernism’s most important painters

“Since love of life people and painting are to me the same as long as I can lift a brush my heart and mind remain dedicated and my faith steadfast,” Beauford Delaney (1901–1979) wrote of his existence as an artist. He lived up to these words. For more than fifty years, Delaney devoted himself to painting, moving from his birthplace in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Boston, New York, and eventually Paris in pursuit of artistic mastery. Along the way, he exhibited in the same galleries and museums as Jackson Pollock, Romare Bearden, and Sam Francis and amassed a circle of admirers that included James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Ornette Coleman. Delaney faced tremendous obstacles on his artistic journeys. As a queer Black Southern man who suffered from auditory hallucinations and extreme poverty, Delaney struggled throughout his life. Nonetheless, his luminous paintings suggest hope and even transcendence. Building on his family’s teachings that art constitutes “the immortal sons and daughters of the soul,” Delaney painted a vision of artistic union and posterity that celebrates love in all its forms.

Lovelight explores the development of Delaney’s art from his early days in Appalachia through his final years in France. Drawing on extensive archival research, rarely seen images, interviews with Delaney’s friends, and the painter’s own writings, Mary Campbell gives a moving account of an artist whose work ranks among the great achievements of twentieth-century modernism.