Beauford Delaney (American, 1901 – 1979) abstract oil on fabric pillow case. Abstract rendering of a human face with thickly applied streams of yellow, orange, green, and black paint bordered by two wide black painted lines for top and bottom margins. Includes Beauford Delaney’s paint cloth and paint stick with similar color paint residue. 24″ x 19 1/4″ sight, 27″ x 19 1/4″ total, brush 12″ length. Note – Beauford Delaney’s departure from New York to Paris in 1953 also marked the transition from figurative compositions to abstract expressionism with a focus on color and light. Strapped with financial challenges in his early Paris years, he was believed to have painted on other found objects if canvas was not available. An example of one of his earliest known dated abstracts is an untitled oil on a raincoat fragment from 1954. This work serves as the cover for Sue Canterbury’s book, “Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris”, Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2004. Sue Canterbury, Associate Curator of the Dallas Museum of Art, and Stephen Wicks, Curator of the Knoxville Museum of Art, were able to inspect this work when Ms. Canterbury gave her September 2014 lecture on Beauford Delaney in Knoxville. This Beauford Delaney abstract is only the second documented example of his work using canvas available from household objects. Provenance – Estate of Beauford Delaney, Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, court-appointed administrator. CONDITION: Stains, some staple remnants to margins, toning.