Biography
Barbara Delaney (b. Osnabrück, Germany 1941) spent a year in the USA aged 16 and then in 1959 relocated to London. She studied at the Central School of Art and Design, 1968; gained an Arts Council Award, 1972; a Greater London Arts Award, 1976; and was a finalist for a Gregory Fellowship, Leeds University, 1978. From 1979–85 she was a part-time lecturer in fine art (painting) at de Montfort University, Leicester; Kingston University; and Camberwell College of Art. Group shows included Kansas City Art Institute, America, 1975; Anne Berthoud and Redfern Galleries, both 1980; New York Contemporary Art Fair, 1992; Hong Kong Contemporary Art Fair, 1995; Art96, 1996; Drawing Parallels, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 2002–3 (with a solo exhibition there, with chosen pieces from its ethnographic collections, 2004); and Woolff Gallery, 2003.
Solo exhibitions included Air Gallery/Surrey University, Guildford, 1978; Atkinson Art Gallery and Museum, Southport, 1979; Sally East Gallery, 1981; Bassetlaw Museum, Retford, 1996; Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Friends Room, Victoria & Albert Museum, both 2002; Tale of Two Cities, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, 2003; and Selective Affinities, Southampton City Art Gallery, 2005. That was Delaney’s twenty-eighth one-man exhibition, from which the City Art Gallery acquired her 2003 painting The Meeting of the Dragon, the Bull and the Anteater. Of her abstract works Delaney said: “After-images interest me, also double images: a thing being more than itself – reflections in water, on glass”, or “music like Satie’s piano works, or jazz”. Public collections holding examples include the British Museum; Birmingham and Leicester Museums & Art Galleries; The Astley Cheetham Art Collection (Tameside Museums and Galleries Service), Stalybridge; Bassetlaw Museum, Retford and the Government Art Collection; Brunel, Open, Southampton and Surrey Universities; and the Nuffield Foundation.
