Claremont Museum of Art Opens April 15th Exhibiting Karl Benjamin

Saturday, 14 April 2007 22:46

CLAREMONT, CA - College town of Claremont, California, will gain a museum of its own when the Claremont Museum of Art opens its doors to the public on Sunday, April 15, 2007.  Located inside a renovated citrus packing house, the museum’s inaugural exhibit will be a retrospective of the work of renowned Claremont painter Karl Benjamin.  “Claremont is home to a remarkable number of internationally-acclaimed artists, many of whom settled here to teach at the prestigious Claremont Colleges,” said Executive Director William Moreno, former director of The Mexican Museum in San Francisco.  “The result is an impressive body of work and significant arts community that will now have an institution dedicated to celebrating this on-going legacy.”

The inaugural exhibit, A Conversation with Color: Karl Benjamin, Paintings 1953-1995, will feature 46 paintings spanning 42 years that trace Karl Benjamin’s career, from his early experiments with cubism to works that represent his role as one of the founders of abstract classicism.

The permanent collection, Building a Legacy: Founding a Museum, Building a Collection, will occupy the smaller of the two museum galleries with works exhibited on a rotating basis.  The collection will present work by Millard Sheets, Jean Ames, Harrison McIntosh, Betty Davenport Ford, Aldo Casanova, Roland Reiss, Norm Hines, James Hueter, Milford Zornes, and other notable local artists.

The Packing House

With 3,500 square feet of exhibition space, a store, sculpture garden, and offices, the museum will occupy the west end of the historic citrus Packing House currently being restored and redeveloped as part of the Village expansion project.  The renovated 1922 building will also house a jazz club, restaurants, shops, galleries, and live/work lofts.

“The spirit in which this building was originally conceived -- a cooperative effort of citrus ranchers who came together to pack and ship their fruit -- is similar to what’s happening with the Claremont Museum of Art,” said Architect Mark von Wodkte, also a founding board member of the museum.  “That the Claremont Museum of Art is located within the Packing House is a celebration of this place and its history.”

A Conversation with Color: Karl Benjamin, Paintings 1953-1995

Beginning with his earliest experiments with cubist-inspired pictorialism and stimulated by the works of Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, and Lionel Feininger, A Conversation with Color: Karl Benjamin, Paintings 1953-1995 will follow Benjamin's trajectory through his breakthrough hard edge works and international exposure with the landmark exhibition Four Abstract Classicists in 1959 to the serial explorations with patterns, systems, letter shapes, stripes, and natural forms in the 70's and 80's.

The exhibition will culminate with examples of his often overlooked later works where he returned to compositions harkening back to his innovative early paintings, this time infused with a rich and complex palette, refined by decades of observations and ‘conversations’ with color.  A resident of Claremont since 1952, a professor of art at Pomona College from 1979 to 1994, and a nurturing and unwavering supporter of emerging and established artists, Karl Benjamin continues to be a significant and profound influence on a generation of artists