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Ben Schonzeit Art

American, b. 1942

Ben Schonzeit was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942. He is a graduate of The Cooper Union. He has exhibited widely both here and abroad since 1969. Schonzeit is a leading representative of the so-called Photo-Realists, who use photographs rather than reality as a basis for their paintings. He has also created works on paper from life and his imagination using a variety of mediums such as pen & ink, brush and watercolor. Schonzeit is internationally recognized as a pioneer of the Photorealist Movement (1970's) along with artists such as Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Robert Bechtle and Malcolm Morley. However, Schonzeit sets himself apart from this movement by choice and depiction of the subject matter. Schonzeit’s canvases were filled with highly magnified fruits, vegetables and flowers sometimes reproduced in a deliberately skewed, out of focus manner. His aesthetic is informed by the concurrent movements of Pop, that of color field painting, whose concerns were more formal. Schonzeit uses familiar objects as a vehicle to explore issues of color, form, content and abstraction. He is a prolific artist who embraces imagination as opposed to observation; invented rather than the depicted. Schonzeit is concerned with narrative color, abstraction, intellectual experience, drama and beauty. His work speaks of sensation, nostalgia, memory, relationships and associations unique to each viewer and each viewing. His paintings, drawings and photographs are included in the collections of many important museums around the world including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Denver Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum.

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Artist: Ben Schonzeit
“Dutch Lilies”
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in Warren, NJ
This is an ben schonzeit original on canvas. In my opinion this is one of Ben’s finest works I’ve seen. Painting is in good condition. Frame has some scratches, but nothing major. No...
Category

20th Century Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Oil

Lamps, Surrealist Black and White Etching by Ben Schonzeit
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Ben Schonzeit, American (1942 - ) Title: Lamps Year: 1979 Medium: Etching, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 14/125 Image Size: 19.5 x 17 inches Size: 28 x 25 in. (71.12...
Category

1970s Conceptual Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Etching

Yankee Flame Pop Art photorealist Lt Ed Signed/N. Statue of Liberty US President
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in New York, NY
Ben Schonzeit Yankee Flame, from the portfolio: America: the Third Century, 1975 Collotype on wove paper Pencil signed and numbered 50/200 on the front Publisher: APC Editions, Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, Inc Printer: Triton Press 27 × 19 3/10 inches Unframed Note: this is the original hand signed and numbered collotype; not to be confused with the separate (unsigned) poster edition. This hand-signed, numbered and dated collotype in colors by photorealist pioneer artist Ben Schonzeit was created in 1975 for the portfolio America: the Third Century, commissioned by Mobil Oil Corporation in which 13 American artists, including Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and others created works celebrating America's bicentennial. Yankee Flame combines the iconic images of George Washington, Coca-Cola and the Statue of Liberty into a collaged interpretation of contemporary American life and the meaning of freedom. "Yankee Flame" is in excellent condition and never framed. It was acquired as part of the America: The Third Century full portfolio. Ben Schonzeit (b. 1942, Brooklyn, New York) is one of the original Photorealist painters and is considered to have pioneered the airbrush technique. His works often depict still life arrangements that are intentionally out of focus. He received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union in 1964 and has since had over 50 solo exhibitions both in the United States and abroad. His paintings are held in numerous museum collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1973 Nancy Hoffman introduced me to Ben Schonzeit in the backroom of her gallery on West Broadway. She had been open less than a year, and Ben was one of the artists in her original stable. His large Crab Blue It had arrived from his studio a few days earlier and was leaning against the wall. I thought at the time it was one of the most impressive, virtuosic Photorealist works I had seen. That first encounter was more than a quarter of a century ago and I have always considered it to be one of the quintessential, tour de force paintings of American Photorealism. In the early seventies one could stand on West Broadway on any pleasant, sunny weekday and see less than a dozen people on the street between the Nancy Hoffman Gallery and OK Harris Works of Art. Almost all of the SoHo galleries, such as Leo Castelli, Paula Cooper, Ward-Nasse, and Ivan Karp’s Hundred Acres, could be visited in an afternoon. At night the streets were almost deserted. With the exception of Andy Warhol, there were no art world superstars. More importantly, none of the artists expected to achieve celebrity status. That was a phenomenon of the eighties and nineties. There were a only a handful of restaurants and watering holes, such Elephant and Castle, Fanelli’s, the Spring Street Bar and Prince Street Bar. Fanelli’s closed on weekends, which was a holdover from their sweatshop clientele during lunch and ragtag group of artists in the evenings. In those early days of SoHo, the drafty, raw sweatshop spaces with their large windows, rough floors, and service elevators provided large, inexpensive living quarters and studios for many artists. Unlike today, there were no boutiques. The area was not chic and with the exception of Lowell Nesbett’s showplace, the lofts were not glamorous. Schonzeit was in the same living and working space the he now occupies when I first visited him, but SoHo was a very different time and place. When the National Endowment of the Arts recommended me to curate America 1976, which turned into one of the major visual arts projects for the Bicentennial, Ben Schonzeit was on the first list of participants I made up for the U.S. Department of the Interior. His large diptych, Continental Divide, was one of the most memorable works produced for the exhibit. I stopped by his studio four or five times while it was in progress and have visited him many times over the years. We have maintained a very cordial working relationship and friendship over the past three decades. I saw The Music Room exhibit in 1978 and realized at the time that the vigorously rendered mural sized canvases and mirror and related works represented a major catharsis in his painting. In many ways, it and the other paintings and drawings based on the same image represented a sharp, decisive break with the tenets of Photorealism, or at least the photo-replicative aspects that had been so widely heralded in America and abroad in the mid-seventies. Over the years we have continued to work together. He has been in almost all of the major exhibitions I have curated here and abroad and in almost all of the books I have written. I am familiar with his studio habits, his quiet, internalized restlessness that manifests itself in the hundreds of small, unknown drawings and watercolors, doodles on napkins during lunch, and imaginary landscapes. I also know that he would rather do a painting than think or talk about it. Over the years I have followed the shifts in his studio procedure from the monumental airbrushed fruit and vegetable paintings to the most recent bouquets of flowers and decorative paintings. Our discussions of these matters tends to lapse into a verbal shorthand at this point. The following essay is based on both my longstanding familiarity and admiration for his work and involvement with contemporary realism and figurative painting. A booklet of color xeroxes with notes made up by Schonzeit was extremely helpful. In addition to several interviews, much of the information unfolded through a lengthy series of Emails. Due to our different working habits these were composed and sent out very late at night and answered by Ben the following morning. They dealt with the specifics of many of the paintings, generalities, his background and childhood in Brooklyn, and occasional bits of art world gossip. And there were odd discoveries. Prior to discussing his witty, tongue in cheek painting of Buffalo Bill, I did not know or had long forgotten that William Cody...
Category

1970s Pop Art Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Other Medium, Lithograph, Pencil

Roses with Dutch Landscape, Photorealist Lithograph by Ben Schonzeit
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Ben Schonzeit, American (1942 - ) Title: Roses with Dutch Landscape Year: 1990 Medium: Lithograph, signed, dated, and numbered in pencil Edition: 66/72 Paper Size: 43 x 48 ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Lithograph

"Lamps (White)", 1979, Intaglio by Ben Schonzeit
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Ben Schonzeit, American (1942 - ) Title: Lamps (White) Year: 1979 Medium: Intaglio, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 14/125 Size: 28.5 x 25 in. (72.39 x 63.5 cm)
Category

1970s Contemporary Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Intaglio

Yankee Flame, Colorful Pop Art Collotype by Ben Schonzeit
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Ben Schonzeit, American (1942 - ) Title: Yankee Flame from the Portfolio, America: The Third Century Year: 1976 Medium: Collotype, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 200 ...
Category

1970s Surrealist Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Lithograph

Yankee Flame
By Ben Schonzeit
Located in Aventura, FL
Collotype on paper. Hand signed and dated on front by Ben Schonzeit. Hand numbered 147/200. Artwork size 30 x 22.25 inches. From America: The Third Century portfolio. Published...
Category

1970s Contemporary Ben Schonzeit Art

Materials

Paper

Yankee Flame
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Ben Schonzeit art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Ben Schonzeit art available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of art to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of orange and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Ben Schonzeit in lithograph, acrylic paint, paint and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Ben Schonzeit art, so small editions measuring 20 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Robert Bechtle, Fredrick Reichman, and Roy De Forest. Ben Schonzeit art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $500 and tops out at $42,000, while the average work can sell for $1,800.

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