KARL BENJAMIN (1925)

Color is the subject matter of painting.  It possesses a powerful emotive quality, unique in each individual.  Regardless of style or content, color is the material from which paintings are made. This understanding has guided the work of Karl Benjamin since the inception of his career as a painter in the early fifties.

A dazzling practitioner of what critic Jules Langsner termed hard edge painting and one of the four artists featured in the landmark 1959 Abstract Classicists exhibition, Benjamin fills each canvas with meticulously orchestrated color.  A sharp-angled wedge of forest green lined by the tenderest block of spring green forms something like the feeling of a hill or does it?  Benjamin's intuitive sensitivity to the peculiar union of form and color produces works that defy reason and return the viewer to the purely sensual delight of seeing.

Karl Benjamin's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and is included in a number of prestigious private and public collections.  Louis Stern Fine Arts is the exclusive representative of his work and this exhibition marks his first with the gallery.

Karl Benjamin was born in Chicago, IL in 1925. He received his BA from University of Redlands, Redlands, CA and his MFA at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA. He was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Visual Arts in both 1983 and 1989. His work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions and is included in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, Israel; Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, among others. For many years, Benjamin taught painting at Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School, and currently is Professor Emeritus. He lives in Claremont, CA. stern, stern, stern