Narcissus/ROCI USA (Wax Fire Works)
Published November 5, 2024
Benjamin Benno, 1901 - 1980
by Emma Reinhardt
Published November 13, 2024
Benjamin Benno’s contemporaries were convinced he was one of Modern Art’s next great artistic geniuses. While it is clear that they were correct in their beliefs, their hopes that he would rise to the global success of fellow Modern artists like de Kooning, Picasso, and Rothko did not come to fruition.
L'Episoir, 1934
Oil on Canvas
Benno was born Benjamin Greenstein in 1901 in London. By the time he turned 5, his mother had passed away, his father had immigrated to New York, and the boy himself was shipped off to Odessa, Russia to live with his grandmother. There, he made his first forays into art by carving guns and swords to use as weapons in mock war with his companions. This time in Russia was short-lived, however, as his father soon summoned Benno back to him to live and go to school in the US.
Benno’s relationship with his father was terrible, as Benno desired nothing more than to create art while his father tried in vain to push him into a traditional high school education. When in school, Benno would draw instead of listening to teachers and their lessons. A family friend directed Benno to join the Ferrer School – named after the Spanish anarchist Francisco Ferrer – to study under the eyes of teachers Robert Henri and George Bellows and school founder Emma Goldman. It was here that he finally began to see the guidance he needed, although his inability to speak English at the beginning of his studies proved to be a hurdle he and his tutors had to get over together.
The divide between Benno and his father persisted despite this. “It is most interesting,” George S. Hellman wrote in 1922, “the Jewish father intent on education, and blind to the significance of the boy’s passion; the boy – equally intent, and – in his indifference to the value of education – almost equally blind.” The result of this conflict eventually led to Benno taking to the sea in 1917, where he would work and travel on and off for many years. When not at sea, he continued his study of the arts at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design and the Ferrer School.
Eventually, Benno settled into a studio in Greenwich Village in New York where he quickly lost what little savings he had and became like many other artists of his generation: starving. Despite having pieces shown in exhibitions throughout the city, his name was failing to make much purchase in the New York art scene. What little income he did make could only go towards meager supplies like clay and charcoal, but never grander media like marble, bronze, canvas, or paint. “A few hundreds of drawings; a few plaster casts; a notable carving in wood, the portrait of a Greenwich Village character – these are what we are enabled to consider in speaking of the promise of Benjamin Greenstein.” (Hellman, 1922).
This did not stop Benno from creating. Nor did it stop his supporters in their belief in him and their celebration of his successes. Hellman, one of his largest collectors and commissioners, sang his praises and likened his work to the masterpieces of old, considering it an honor to be alive when Benno was. In a letter in 1923, Emma Goldman wrote of Benno to her friend Stuart Kerr:
An Evocation on Man And Nature, 1939
Oil on Canvas
“How mysterious are the ways of genius. To come to fore regardless of all obstacles. It reads almost like a fairy tale, Greentstein's vicissitudes, and that he should finally have succeeded in making people realise his worth. I am glad and proud that the Ferrer school was the first place to give him his initiation. I hope that from now on life will be a little less cruel to him.”
The Metamorphosis of a Persecuted Star, 1938
Oil on Canvas
Robert Henri eventually helped Benno to fund a trip to Europe where he was then able to obtain a Guggenheim grant and move to Paris until the outbreak of WWII.
While in Paris, he struggled once more to make a name for himself, despite gaining noteworthy support. He even had Picasso himself sponsor his first solo show. Benno followed the path of similar artists seeking the Paris Experience, studying under the work of Picasso and the other notable Parisian artists like Braque and Duchamp. What he learned from these artists was to create a variable artistic practice.
While in Paris, he struggled once more to make a name for himself, despite gaining noteworthy support. He even had Picasso himself sponsor his first solo show. Benno followed the path of similar artists seeking the Paris Experience, studying under the work of Picasso and the other notable Parisian artists like Braque and Duchamp. What he learned from these artists was to create a variable artistic practice.
Benjamin Benno is today most often referred to as Cubist, but examination of his oeuvre shows a much border range of movements. His style bounded from Impressionistic nudes in charcoal to wild Abstract Expressionist paintings to fractalized visions of city rooftops and Surrealist renditions of still lifes. His skill seemed to lie in his ability to pull entire artistic styles from each artist he studied with. Unlike his contemporaries, he was wholly uninterested in maintaining a single style with which he could be easily identified by the art market.
At the end of his life, Benno was working as a taxi driver in New York. A car crash took away much of his dexterity but even before then, he did not paint much. He eventually passed away from cancer in 1980. In one of the last vignettes of the artist, the poet Paul Pines reflected on a time when he finally was allowed to see Benno’s art:
“The loft is furnished simply with a bed, table, chairs and racks that hold his life’s work…He pulls out a chair for me at the dining room table.
‘I don’t paint anymore,’ he confesses. ‘I worry about what I’ve already done. The thought of bringing more into the world is ludicrous.’
He starts removing canvases from the rack, displays them for my inspection. Suddenly I am surrounded by squares of glowing color, images redolent of Picasso, Gris, Matisse, Klee, Ernst—but filtered through a sensibility that is finally all his, messages alive with content, and in their way, sacred. I am shocked not only by their energy, but by the fact he can’t find a home for them…
‘It appears that nobody wants them.’ Benno returns each to its niche.
I leave his loft with paintings aglow before my mind’s eye.”
Sources:
Goldman, Emma. Emma Goldman to Stuart Kerr, Berlin, Germany, February 12, 1923.
Hellman, George S. “The Promise of Benjamin Greenstein.” Menorah Journal volume 6, issue 5 (October 1922): 292-297. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005249126&seq=326.
Pines, Paul. “The Death of Posterity, Reflections in a Nutshell.” Golden Handcuffs Review. https://www.goldenhandcuffsreview.com/gh12content/7.php
Raynor, Vivien. “ART; Pre-Abstract Expressionist Artist.” The New York Times, September 18, 1988.