Daliel's Gallery

Front of Daliel's Bookstore and Gallery in Berkeley, California, 1946

Daliel's Gallery (stylized in all lowercase, and sometimes just 'daliel') was a display and performance space in the San Francisco Bay Area in California in the 1940s and 1950s; the building also contained Daliel's Bookstore. George Leite opened Daliel's at 2466 Telegraph Avenue between Dwight and Haste Streets in Berkeley, as a combination bookstore and art gallery in 1945, naming both after a half-brother in Portugal he had never met, Dalael Leite.[1]

The bookstore was also the home of Circle Magazine[2] and Circle Editions, the publishing ventures Leite established at the same time.

Artists featured in the gallery included painters, sculptors and printmakers, as well as jewellers, musicians, and modern dancers.[3] These included painter Zahara Schatz, jazz musician Dave Brubeck from Concord, sculptor Jean Varda, and jeweler Peter Macchiarini. One show in 1950 was by a group of nuns from Oregon who had been taught in a summer class at their college by Jean Varda.[4] The store closed in 1952 several years after the magazine ceased publication.[5]

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  Interior view of Daliel's Gallery looking toward SF Bay
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  Interior view of Daliel's looking toward Telegraph Avenue
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  George Leite and Anaïs Nin at booksigning at Daliel's
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  Interior view of Daliel's Gallery looking toward Telegraph Avenue
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  Construction barricade by Bezalel Schatz at Daliel's in 1946

Notable artists exhibited

• Chiura Obata – water colors
• Dave Brubeck – jazz chamber music
• David Park (painter) – paintings
• Elmer Bischoff – paintings
• Eugene Berman Berman Brothers – paintings
• George Albert Harris – paintings
• Jean Varda – mosaics and collages
• Man Ray – photographs
• Marc Chagall – prints
• Peter Macchiarini – jewelry
• Robert P. McChesney – drawings and paintings
• Zahara Schatz – plastic laminations and paintings

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  Chiura Obata exhibit 1949 promotional print
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  Robert McChesney exhibit 1950 promotional card
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  Emerson Elementary School student exhibit 1948 promotional card
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  Basil Marros exhibit 1947 promotional card
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  Zahara Schatz exhibit 1949 promotional card

References

1. "Oral history interview with Nancy Leite". leitefamily.net. May 5, 2015. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
2. Davidson, Michael (1991). The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century. Cambridge University Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-521-42304-5.
3. "Berkeley Daily Gazette". January 12, 1947. p. 11.
4. "Berkeley Daily Gazette". May 4, 1950. p. 8.
5. Brady, Mildred (April 1947). "The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy". Harper's Magazine.