Barbara Benish

Barbara Benish (1958) is a California-born artist and writer whose work explores and celebrates our intrinsic connection with the natural world. Her sculptures, paintings, and installations often critique contemporary human practices in the environment, lifting up a more indigenous approach to that relationship, as learned from the artists’ formative years in Hawai’i, where she studied Polynesian art and ethnography at the University. Deeply involved with artists in Czechoslovakia in the 1980’s underground, Benish (who is part Czech) moved there as Fulbright scholar after the fall of totalitarianism in 1989. She divides her time between studios in the Czech Republic and Portugal.  Barbara Benish’s visual art has been shown in hundreds of international exhibitions, and at numerous institutions in Europe and the U.S., including P.S.1 Museum (M.o.M.A, New York), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Stadtgeschichtliche Museen  (Germany), and the National Gallery (Prague). Her work has been shown twice at the prestigious Venice Biennale, as well as dozens of alternative galleries and exhibition spaces in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe.

Master of Fine Arts, Claremont Graduate University, California. 1986-88

Kunstakademien, Stockholm, Sweden. 1983-4 (Scholarship)

Bachelor of Arts, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (Art +Ethnology Major). 1980-82

Instituto de Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. 1979 (Scholarship)

Chouinard Institute of Art, Los Angeles, California. 1975-76 (Scholarship)

Selected Solo:
"furor melancholicus", Stadtgeschichtliche Museen Nürnberg, (Dürer Haus), Germany
• "Encuentro", Sculptural Installations, Prášna Brána, City of Prague Gallery, CZ.
• "Nude Devices/Divested Encounters", Otis/Parsons Gallery, Los Angeles.

Selected Group:
“Sleepless Nights”, P.S. 1 Museum, New York.
“Above and Below”, AltaSea, Port of Los Angeles
“Eco-Art work: 11 Artists from 8 Countries”, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, California
"Substantialis Corpus Mixti", the Czech Center, Bohemian National Hall, New York City.
“On This Side of the Sky: UNESCO Salutes Women in Art”, U.N.E.S.C.O. Headquarters, Paris.
“Public Art”, Center for Modern & Contemporary Art, National Gallery, Prague