11 Facts About Leigh Behnke

Leigh Behnke was born on 1946 and is an American painter based in Manhattan in New York City, who is known for multi-panel, representational paintings that investigate perception, experience and interpretation.

Leigh Behnke gained recognition in the 1980s, during an era of renewed interest in imagery and Contemporary Realism.

Leigh Behnke's paintings combine meticulous, realist technique, formal rigor commonly associated with abstraction, and postmodern conceptual strategies, such as fragmentation and deconstruction.

Leigh Behnke's work belongs to the public art collections of the New York Public Library, New York Historical Society, and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, among others, and has been discussed in Artforum, Arts Magazine, ARTnews, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Leigh Behnke teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is married to the photorealist painter Don Eddy.

Leigh Behnke initially studied interior design at the Pratt Institute, developing an interest in architecture, but switched to art, producing abstract sculpture that reflected the dominant influence of Minimalism and Constructivism.

Art historian Virginia Anne Bonito wrote that in this work Leigh Behnke sought to create representational versions of Josef Albers's abstract, chromatic investigations, colorist analogues to Muybridge's stop-action photography, and deconstructions of Cubism.

Leigh Behnke rented her first New York studio in 1972, sharing a Christopher Street space with painters John Wesley and Robert Birmelin; soon after, she met future husband, Don Eddy.

Leigh Behnke emerged in the late-1970s amid resurgent interest in Contemporary Realism and changing norms regarding the relationships between representation and abstraction, referentiality and content.

In recent years, Leigh Behnke's imagery has become more varied, incorporating a wider range of elements, locations and formats alongside her characteristic studies of architectural spaces and exteriors.

Leigh Behnke's work belongs to many public and private art collections, including those of the New York Public Library, New York Historical Society, Butler Institute of American Art, Currier Gallery of Art, Georgetown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Springfield Art Museum in Missouri.