Beauford Delaney
Beauford Delaney was an American modernist painter. He is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950s. Beaufords younger brother, Joseph, was also a noted painter.
Beauford Delaney was born December 30, 1901 in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America in 1901. Delaneys parents were prominent and respected members of Knoxvilles black community. His father Samuel was both a barber and a Methodist minister. His mother Delia was also prominent in the church, and earned a living taking in laundry and cleaning the houses of prosperous local whites. Delia, born into slavery and never able to read and write herself, transferred a sense of dignity and selfesteem to her children, and preached to them about the injustices of racism and the value of education. Beauford was the eighth of ten children, only four of whom survived into adulthood. He summed up the reasons for this in a journal entry from 1961, saying so much sickness came from improper places to live long distances to walk to schools improperly heated too much work at home natural conditions common to the poor that take the bright flowers like terrible cold in nature
Source: Wikipedia