American, b. 1941
Born in Louisiana, Benglis began her artistic studies at Newcomb College (now part of Tulane University). After earning her BFA in 1964, she moved to New York to study painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.
In New York, Benglis joined a close-knit artistic circle that included artists involved with Minimalism and Process Art. These styles, along with Abstract Expressionism, influenced Benglis’s hybridized creative process and approach to form. Employing a broad range of materials in acid hues, her best-known works record the behavior of a fluid substance in action. Alongside peers like Eva Hesse, Alan Saret, and Richard Serra, she allowed the process of making to dictate the shape of her finished works, wielding pliant matter that “can and will take its own form.”
Benglis invented a new format with her celebrated “pours,” which resembled paintings but came off the wall to occupy the space of sculpture. In Blatt and other similar works from 1969, she extended Jackson Pollock’s famed drip technique into three dimensions, spilling liquid rubber directly onto the floor. Benglis continued to explore distinctive sculptural forms in polyurethane in the 1970s, and later began creating knotted and pleated metal sculptures.
Benglis, a prominent member of the feminist art movement in the 1960s and 1970s and staunch advocate for gender equality in the art world, has also created videos and photographs that focus on gender and power relations.
In New York, Benglis joined a close-knit artistic circle that included artists involved with Minimalism and Process Art. These styles, along with Abstract Expressionism, influenced Benglis’s hybridized creative process and approach to form. Employing a broad range of materials in acid hues, her best-known works record the behavior of a fluid substance in action. Alongside peers like Eva Hesse, Alan Saret, and Richard Serra, she allowed the process of making to dictate the shape of her finished works, wielding pliant matter that “can and will take its own form.”
Benglis invented a new format with her celebrated “pours,” which resembled paintings but came off the wall to occupy the space of sculpture. In Blatt and other similar works from 1969, she extended Jackson Pollock’s famed drip technique into three dimensions, spilling liquid rubber directly onto the floor. Benglis continued to explore distinctive sculptural forms in polyurethane in the 1970s, and later began creating knotted and pleated metal sculptures.
Benglis, a prominent member of the feminist art movement in the 1960s and 1970s and staunch advocate for gender equality in the art world, has also created videos and photographs that focus on gender and power relations.
