Greene Street (Primary Title)
Beauford Delaney, American, 1901 - 1979 (Artist)
A leading 20th-century American modernist, Beauford Delaney produced striking portraits, cityscapes, and abstractions throughout a productive career that began in his birthplace of Knoxville, Tennessee. This innovative work dates from the artist’s so-called Greene Street period, the address of his Lower Manhattan studio where he painted before his 1953 move to Paris. Greene Street features the artist’s signature motifs of the time (fire escape and hydrant, lamppost) as well as his vibrant palette and energetic brushwork. The bold color scheme—suggestive of the French Fauves (or “Wild Beasts”)—drew particular praise when the work was exhibited in 1949. Critic and artist Elaine de Kooning singled out Delaney’s “violently painted street-scene,” echoing writer Henry Miller’s description of his friend’s Greene Street work as “virulent, explosive paintings . . . invested with color, mad with color . . . full of remembrances too, and solitudes.”
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