Biography

Born in Chicago in 1925, Benjamin attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois before joining the U.S. Navy during World War II. Following his service, he resumed school at the University of the Redlands, and graduated with a combined degree in English literature, history and philosophy. He first began painting in 1951, and from the beginning his work was well-received by critics and he was awarded his first solo exhibition in 1954 at the Pasadena Museum of Art (now Norton Simon Museum). His international debut came with his inclusion in Jules Langsner’s Four Abstract Classicists exhibition in 1959, which toured the United States and then traveled to London. Along with Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersly, and John McLaughlin, Benjamin influenced an entire generation of artists with this ground-breaking show. The term “hard-edge” was coined to describe the paintings of these artists.

A seminal figure in the development of hard-edge abstraction in the 1960s and a forerunner of Op Art, Karl Benjamin has remained committed to the simultaneous exploration of color and form throughout his career. Though he initially worked in an Abstract Expressionist mode, drawing inspiration from artists Willem de Kooning and Adolph Gottlieb, he quickly adopted
a more structured and modulated approach, emphasizing geometric shapes and stark edges rather than expressive, gestural brushstrokes. Under the influence of Abstract Expressionism’s “all over” aesthetic, Benjamin paints compositions in which “the elongated forms…interlock in a continuous composition that seems to be without beginning or end.”

Painted three years after his debut exhibition, Totem Group IV (1957) is exemplary of Benjamin’s work from this period. Using a limited palette of blues, reds, and black, the artist creates an energetic composition of jagged shapes that interlock seamlessly like pieces of a puzzle and form a dynamic visual harmony. A skilled colorist, the artist carefully orchestrates his hues in order to emphasize and define the shapes while maintaining overall coherence within the work. Totem IV exemplifies the artist’s belief that “color is the subject matter of painting. Regardless of style or content, it is the material from which paintings are made.”

(SJMA Council of 100, 05/20/04)

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