Fletcher Benton
Fletcher Benton ( born February 25, 1931 in Jackson ( Ohio)) is an American painter and sculptor steel.
- 2.1 Collections ( selection)
Life
Benton studied from 1953 to 1956 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1956, he moved to California. There he taught from 1959 to 1966 at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, 1966/1967 at the San Francisco Art Institute and from 1967 to 1986 at the California State University, San Jose.
His first solo exhibition was in the Benton Gump 's Gallery, San Francisco, 1959. Benton lives and works in San Francisco.
Awards (selection)
Solo exhibitions (selection )
The marked with "K" shows a catalog was published.
- 2009 Albright -Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo ( New York)
- 2011 Georg -Kolbe- Museum, Berlin
Work
At the beginning of his artistic career in the 1950s and 1960s, Benton painted abstract images. International attention was Benton first with its battery-powered kinetic sculptures that stood out in particular through its color. With George Rickey he formed a friendship after he had exhibited at the International Exhibition Directions in Kinetic Sculpture in the Art Museum of the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara Museum of Art 1966.
Mid-1970s, he turned to steel sculptures - are often constructed from elementary geometric shapes (such as circle, triangle and square) - like his kinetic sculptures. Benton refers in this work, not least on the Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus. He devoted a whole series of works the letters of the Latin alphabet: " Folded Square Alphabet ". At the movements of his previous kinetic work here remember not only iridescent color or brightness effects but in particular that ( flat ) steel sheets are folded, for example, circles or discs are cut out of square plates and the parts are then assembled into three-dimensional letters sculptures. These movements in the manufacturing process takes the viewer into his spiritual idea after inevitably.
In the series of works " Balanced - Unbalanced " and " Steel Water Color" adds Benton since the early 1980s, led by his intuition, elementary geometric shapes to open compositions together. Not the space occupying mass is his subject, not even a Ausponderieren the masses of the individual parts. Rather, Benton interested about the dynamics of the diagonal or for the apparent mobility of a light circle, find an exciting balance in interaction with others, peace radiating forms. " He is able to channel his intuition into structures of controlled aesthetic impact. " [ Peter Selz 2008]
Collections (selection)
- Smithsonian Institution, Washington d.c
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Stanford Museum of Art
- Denver Art Museum
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
- Museum Ludwig, Cologne
- Kröller -Müller Museum, Otterlo