During the Harlem Renaissance, Beauford Delaney painted the urban scape in engaging sweeps of color on canvas. “I never drew a decent thing until I felt the rhythm of New York,” he said in a 1930 interview. “New York has a rhythm as distinct as the beating of a human heart. And I’m trying to put it on canvas.” The city was indeed beating. He saw the poet laureates, crossed paths with Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Miller, and became the young James Baldwin’s “spiritual father.” Delaney didn’t have an easy start in life, in Knoxville, Tennessee. His mother, Delia, was born into slavery and cleaned white people’s houses; his father was a barber. But in 1929 he moved to New York and found his way into bohemian circles. In 1953, he moved to Paris. Delaney drew the whole time—portraits, abstractions, scenes. This exhibition includes 90 drawings, a medium central to his oeuvre. Brochures, photographs, and press clippings round out the show. —Elena Clavarino