Ben Benn

Modernist Family Outing with Dog (Picnic in the Park) Ben Benn Oil Painting WPA

1946

Genre: Modern Subject: People Medium: Acrylic Surface: Canvas Country: United States Dimensions: 20" x 24" Scene of a family leisurely gathering together in a park to picnic and enjoying their day by the artist Ben Benn. Ben Benn, Russian/American (1884-1983) Ben Benn, a Russian-born American still-life and Post Impressionist landscape painter who was part of the first generation of artists in America to try to digest the lessons of Cubism Benn Benn was a pioneer American modernist whose independent style defied stylistic classification. Despite excursions into Cubism and Abstract Expressionist style, Benn “seems always to have been a ‘subject’ painter. Considering this, it is remarkable that he remained visible at all during the 50’s and early 60’s, when prejudice against the representational amounted nearly to a proscription of it.” Benn’s prominence in the art world over 6 decades was reaffirmed at a 90th birthday show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington , D.C. in 1974. Benn was born Benjamin Rosenberg in the town of Kamenets Podolsk in the Russian empire in 1884. This town was the regional capital of an area in what is today, SW Ukraine, and was historically known as Podolia. the Rosenberg family chose, along with thousands of others, to immigrate from Podolia to the United States in 1894 or 1899. “Between 1904 and 1908 Benn attended the National Academy of Design and he studied at the Arts Students League In New York City. He spent most of his career in New York City including memberships with the American Society of Painters and Sculptors, American Artists Congress and the Woodstock Artist Association. Academy curriculum stressed portraiture built up with broad, painterly brushstrokes, a technique that remained the foundation of Benn’s style. In his first group show, in 1913, he exhibited with Max Weber and Man Ray. By the mid teens his canvases were bolder in color and more decorative in style. In 1916, Benn participated in the important "Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters...

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