33 Facts About Anthony Benjamin

Anthony Benjamin FRSA, RE was an English painter, sculptor and printmaker.

Anthony Benjamin began his study at Southall Technical College in 1947 as an engineering draughtsman and was accepted into Regent Street Polytechnic, now known as the University of Westminster.

Between 1961 and 1973 Anthony Benjamin lectured and taught in the United Kingdom, the United States and in Canada.

Anthony Benjamin returned to London in 1974 and in 1986 moved to Norfolk.

Anthony Benjamin was a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.

Anthony Benjamin claimed to have attended at least 12 different schools, learning little except self-defence in the many playgrounds he had to cross.

Anthony Benjamin did not lose his interest in fighting and he took up boxing, eventually becoming a professional fairground fighter.

Anthony Benjamin had an aptitude for careful drawing, as well as an appreciation and understanding of the logical principals of three-dimensional construction, but the lack of creative possibilities frustrated him.

Anthony Benjamin dropped out of the apprenticeship in 1949 and was accepted on the sculpture program at the Regent Street Polytechnic.

Anthony Benjamin's talent had been recognised by a senior member of staff, Norman Blamey, who was a fine draughtsman and teacher.

Blamey accepted the rebellious student into the painting department, where soon Anthony Benjamin produced some accomplished paintings.

Anthony Benjamin served time in Prison as a Conscientious Objector, not just against military service, he was opposed to all forms of conscription.

Anthony Benjamin moved to St Ives, using a legacy from his mother, to buy a small cottage that had belonged to the sculptor, Sven Berlin.

Anthony Benjamin accepted Peter Lanyon's suggestion to join the Newlyn Society of Artists and had his first one-man exhibition there in 1958.

Anthony Benjamin's work, inspired by the Cornish light, land and seascape led him to a new understanding of tone and temper.

Henry Moore encouraged him, Francis Bacon gave him canvasses, and working within this rich atmosphere, Anthony Benjamin produced work which became more expansive and colourful, and gradually more abstract in concept sliding into Abstract Expressionism.

Anthony Benjamin, became friends with the eloquent Scots poet, Sidney Graham, who lived in the Coastguard Cottage at Gurnard's Head.

Anthony Benjamin was awarded an Italian Travel Study Scholarship in 1960.

Anthony Benjamin was profoundly moved by the art of the Early Renaissance that he saw in the museums, palaces and cathedrals.

Anthony Benjamin was struck by the use of repeated flat geometrical shapes in many works, particularly by the strong impact and visual rhythm set up by the rows of saint's halos in Duccio's 'Madonna in Majesty' in the Siena Duomo.

Anthony Benjamin had several one-man shows at the Grabowski Gallery in South Kensington, as well as at St Catherine's College in Oxford and Belfast University.

Anthony Benjamin started teaching with Roy Ascott on the controversial Groundcourse at Ealing Art College in West London.

About this time Anthony Benjamin was starting to experiment with a new approach to 3-dimensional works.

Anthony Benjamin did not want to follow the conventional sculptural approach of carving and modelling figure like shapes from the usual materials, stone, wood, clay, etc.

Anthony Benjamin admired Henry Moore's work, but he did not want to follow in his footprints.

Anthony Benjamin intended to make 'sculpture' that was more relevant to the exciting modern fast-moving, a transient world that was opening up at the time in London.

Anthony Benjamin wanted to use modern materials, coloured plastic, fibreglass, polished metal, stainless steel and bronze.

Anthony Benjamin started making series of silkscreen prints that used the same vibrant colours and similar shapes as the sculpture.

Anthony Benjamin seems to have been exploring the possibility of suggesting movement by the use of colour and form alone.

Anthony Benjamin was certainly enjoying himself fully when he was working on these late paintings, completely engaged and immersed in the act of painting and bursting with new ideas.

Anthony Benjamin was revisiting and developing the spatial and colour concepts, and the connection to musical ideas that he had first explored in the 1970s in the Roxy Bias Screen prints, establishing surface rhythms by the use of repeated geometrical shapes that he had discovered in the early Italian Renaissance paintings and used in his own work in the 1960s.

Anthony Benjamin was using the skill and precision he had learned as an engineering draughtsman at Bell Punch in Hayes Middlesex.

Anthony Benjamin's work is held in corporate collections around the world including Rank Xerox UK, US Steele USA, J Walter Thompson UK, Grindlay's Bank UAE, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Canada, and NKR Sweden.