s t u d i o v i s i t s

Karl Benjamin’s hard-edge paintings have influenced a genera-tion of artists, but for nearly sixty years he’s lived in an unhurried corner of Southern California. It’s where he’s raised his children, painted prolifically, and, more recently, “had time to think.” Photography by Jim McHugh

karlbenjamin

it was a radical house at the time,” says Karl Benjamin of the modernist Claremont, California, home he built with architect Fred McDowell in the mid-1950s. “I couldn’t get a loan—they said there were no windows in the front, and no walls in the back,” he tells

with a smile. “Fred taught me about post-and-beam construction, and I taught him about paint-ing. We were a good pair.”

The home is small by today’s standards, but re-markably adaptable. “The house changed beauti-fully and smoothly as we grew and changed,” says the artist’s eldest daughter Beth. The only major alteration came in 1963, when Benjamin and McDowell added a studio behind the main house. “At nighttime we turn the lights on,” Benjamin explains. “It’s part of the house, visually.”

And visually, the house has crept into Ben-jamin’s work. Painting the exterior—taping off its windows and 2x4s—became, on canvas, an ex-ploration of spatial relationships. “This house has been a great influence on me,” he states. Beth adds, “We didn’t go places during the summer like everyone else. It was time to paint.”

Inside the home, the artist and his wife, Beverly, live surrounded by the things they love: African sculpture (“I just took to the form,” he says), pieces by fellow artists like Harrison McIntosh and Sam Maloof (“Early on, we traded,” whispers Beverly), and tidy stacks of The New Yorker and The Nation. And, of course, there are Benjamin’s paintings, too, which the family help rotate from time to time.

There is rhythm and pattern throughout the house, most notably in the exposed structure of the mid-century furnishings, which echo McDow-ell’s architecture. “I look around here,” Benjamin pauses, “and I see modern art.”

“I had zero Interest In paInt-Ing. I wanted to be a wrIter,” benjamIn says of hIs unex-pected career. of hIs work, he explaIns that “most start In an IntuItIve way—a doodle. I monkey around wIth Ideas, and they begIn to gel.”

K a r l B e n j a m i n

78 | entramagazIne.com

K a r l B e n j a m i n

K a r l B e n j a m i n

84 | entramagazIne.com

K a r l B e n j a m i n

After a year at Northwestern, Karl Benjamin (Chicago, b. 1925) enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving from 1943–46. He settled in California, where his father owned an orange grove, and returned to school on the G.I. Bill. He earned a BA from the University of Redlands (a triple major of history, English literature, and philosophy), and in 1949 took a teaching job at a grade school in Bloomington, CA. There, in that tiny town, a requirement to teach art ignited his own vision. He taught in public schools until 1977, painting all the while. He received his MA from Claremont Graduate School, where he was a professor and an artist-in-resi-dence (roles he also held at Pomona College), and where he stayed until his retirement in 1994. Twice award-ed NEA grants, he’s featured in upcoming shows at Louis Stern Fine Art, The Huntington and The Getty.

#1, 1995