![1944, Beauford Delaney, Negro Man [Claude McKay] -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art | by R.M.Lenox](http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54026549198_5acbe9ed5e.jpg)
1944, Beauford Delaney, Negro Man [Claude McKay] -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From the museum label:
Born in Tennessee, Beauford Delaney settled in New York, where he took part in the vibrant Harlem Renaissance and Greenwich Village art scenes. In the early 1940s, he began a series of portraits, employing bold colors and gestural paint application to depict family, friends, and mentors; among the influential cultural figures who sat for him were James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Henry Miller, and Edna Porter.
In this work, Delaney portrays his friend, Jamaican American writer and poet Claude McKay, a key Harlem Renaissance figure who wrote about Black life, racial injustices, and socialist revolution. Delaney renders McKay's penetrating gaze with colorful, thick, expressive brushstrokes, communicating an energetic spirit and revealing the influence of Vincent van Gogh and Fauvism on his work.
1944, Beauford Delaney, Negro Man [Claude McKay] -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From the museum label:
Born in Tennessee, Beauford Delaney settled in New York, where he took part in the vibrant Harlem Renaissance and Greenwich Village art scenes. In the early 1940s, he began a series of portraits, employing bold colors and gestural paint application to depict family, friends, and mentors; among the influential cultural figures who sat for him were James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Henry Miller, and Edna Porter.
In this work, Delaney portrays his friend, Jamaican American writer and poet Claude McKay, a key Harlem Renaissance figure who wrote about Black life, racial injustices, and socialist revolution. Delaney renders McKay's penetrating gaze with colorful, thick, expressive brushstrokes, communicating an energetic spirit and revealing the influence of Vincent van Gogh and Fauvism on his work.