Artist Name: Benni Efrat

Title: Tag of Despair II

Signature Description: Hand-signed in Hebrew and English on verso

Technique: Mixed media on paper

Image Size: 70 x 100 cm / 27.56" x 39.37" inch

Frame: The painting is framed

Condition: Very good condition.

Artist's Biography:

Benni Efrat, Israeli painter, sculptor, printmaker, and filmmaker, born in 1936 in Beirut, Lebanon.
Active in New York, Belgium, and Israel.

Benni Efrat immigrated to Israel in 1947. He studied at Kibbutz Nahsholim. After leaving the kibbutz, he studied art at the Avni Institute. In the mid-1960s, he helped found the 10+ group. In 1965, he went to London, England, where he created figurative paintings.
In 1966-1967, he studied at the St. Martin's School of Art, where he was exposed to minimalistic and conceptual art. In the 1970s, his work explored power struggles, the relations between form and content, and reality versus artistic representation. In "Energy" (1969), for example, Efrat built a 3-meter-wide cube made entirely of metal coils. During this period, he branched out into new areas, such as video art. In "Painting" (1974), for example, he made a film in which he is seen painting a surface white. The film is projected on a screen that is identical in size and shape to the surface being painted.
In 1975-1981, Efrat lived in New York. There he became close to Bertha Urdang, a gallery owner who promoted Israeli avant-garde artists.
In the 1980s, he moved to Europe, first living in Paris and Amsterdam.
From 1992, he lived and worked in Antewerp, Belgium. His work from the 1980s onwards explored ecological and metaphysical issues. He began dating his works from 2030 onward, marking an imaginary death date at the age of 94.

Benni Efrat was one of the first of Israeli conceptual artists and influenced others in this direction.
His works were systems of components which spoke for themselves and sought to represent no more than the sum of their parts.
In the mid-1970s his displays were accompanied by films, on the back of which the artist had painted.
After settling in New York City in 1976, he became involved with conceptual art, producing drawings, prints, and photographs that explore energy, space and perception in his sculptures. 

"Benni Efrat's works wage a harsh offensive against the viewer's senses, consciousness, and beliefs. They make no attempt to appeal to any given taste, and the choice of raw materials serves the engagement with current issues rather than with intra-artistic concerns. "Art deals with life, but my art deals with the very possibility to survive, to stay alive," says Efrat, who since 1982 has been dating all of his works using a timeline beginning with his estimated year of death, 2030. In this vein, the video installation Doom's Path, Winter 2065, created especially for the show, engulfs the viewers with magnificent, menacing images of environmental destruction.

Efrat's broad and variegated oeuvre since the early 1960s is characterized by the probing spirit of conceptual art. Efrat earned international acclaim for his painting performances on film projections, which were groundbreaking at the time and addressed the gap between representation and action, between repetition and erasure, between human consciousness and the material world. His film sculptures, two of which are featured in this exhibition, use light as a raw material, illustrating the playful aspect of his artistic practice, as the figure of the artist lays bare the fundamental forces structuring human sensory perception.

Although he tends to change his country of residence every decade, Efrat remains a non-absent presence in Israeli art.
The early 1980s saw a sharp transition in his work following an encounter with renowned scientists, among them Carl Sagan, and trips he took to Ruanda and Cambodia.
Since then he has been focusing on the affinity between human abuse of nature and the moral wrongs suffered by the weaker elements in human society, such as child trafficking and the deadly use of weapons and drugs.
At the same time, the exhibition sheds light on the consistent, continuous progression of his work as a whole over more than five decades.
It indicates how Efrat's engagement with the limitations of human perception evolved into a moralist-artistic stance not unlike that of a modern-day prophet of the apocalypse. A rarity in the art world of recent decades, this position proves itself to be more relevant than ever these days."

Education
1959–61 Avni Institute of Art and Design, Tel Aviv, with Yehezkel Streichman
1966-76 St. Martin's School of Art, London

Awards and Prizes
1966 The America-Israel Cultural Foundation Sharett Fund Scholarship for a Young Artist, Tel Aviv University
1969 Participant, Sixth Biennale, Biennale for Young Artists, Paris
1974 Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1992 America-Israel Cultural Foundation

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2016  “Primal Scent”, "Post Post-modernism ≠ Utopia" Haifa Museum of Art.

2014  “The Dove , Summer 2062”, Contemporary By Golconda Gallery  Tel-Aviv

2013  ”ADDING TO SUBTRACT”  wall Painting, Oranim University Gallery

2012  “Adding to Subtract” , Contemporary By Golconda Gallery  Tel-Aviv

2010  “Until The Last Breath”, Haifa Mediterranean Biennale

2004  "Where Have the Bee Gone, Spring 2052, The Art Gallery, University of Haifa, Israel

2002   Robert Fulton Fine Art, San Francisco

1999   Fist Full of Candies, Fall 2048, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv

1998   "Nature's Factory, Winter 2046 ( Benni Efrat and Ronny Someck)", The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, at HaMumcheh Alternative Space, Tel Aviv

1997   Gallery Robert Bonneville, Montreal

          "Hide-and-Seek in a Minefield, Fall 2045", Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv

1996 "Internationaal Cultureel, centrum, Antwerp", macht Onmacht, de Zomer van de Fotografie"             

            Mark Bogart Fine Art, Chicago

1995   "Ararat Express, 2034", First Art Biennale, Johannesburg: Gallery Robert Bonneville, Montreal

1994   Basel Art Fair (Chelouche Gallery)

            "Roots Diversion by Push Button, winter 2042", Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv

1991   "Natural Shape of Things, Winter 2040", Aleph Contemporary Arts, Almere, The Netherlands

            MUHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp

1990   Elisabeth Franck Gallery, Knokke-Zoute, Belgium

            Aleph Contemporary Arts, Almere, the Netherlands

            Chicago International Art Fair (Elisabeth Franck Gallery)

1989   Witzenhausen Meijrink Gallery, Amsterdam

            Gallerij Fons Walters, Amsterdam

1988    M.I.T Boston, "Interaction: Science and Arts"

1987   "Inside Outside", MUHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp,

           “Had No One to Ask, Summer 2035”, Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan

1985   Elisabeth Franck Gallery, Knokke-Zoute, Belgium

1984   "Electra", Musee d'Art Modern, Paris,

1983   "Film as Installation", Clock Tower Gallery, New York,

            "A La Limite", Le Consortium, Dijon, France

1982    "Quest for Light", Galerie de France, Paris

            Symposium International FRIGO, Lyon, France

1981    "Ararat Express", Elac, Lyon, France,

1980    "Under Cover Blues"P.S.1, New York,

             Gallerie Albert Baronian, Brussels

             Gallerie Schmela, Dusseldorf

             Hudson River Museum, New York

1978    "Shadows", P.S.1 NY

            Gallerie Oppenheim, Cologne

            Ohio State University Gallery, Columbus, Ohio

            Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

1976   Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels

1975   Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

            Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York

1974   "Benni Efrat, Adding to Subtract, Artist's Proof", Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

1973   Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York

           Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

           I.C.C, Antwerp -Belgium  

1972   Israel Museum, Jerusalem                  

            Gordon Gallery, Tel-Aviv          

​

Selected Group Exhibitions

​

2015      “The Museum Presents Itself”, Minimalism in the museum’s collections, Tel   Aviv museum

2014      “Other Primary Structures” , The Jewish Museum , New York, NY

2010      “Neo Barbarism” ,Art Space  Tel Aviv

2009      “The Third Decade : 1968-1978” , Tel Aviv Museum  

              “Ecosphere Festival”, Ein Hod, Israel

2008      Israeli Minimalism to Neo-Minimalism, Herzlia Museum of Contemporary Art

              “International triennale of Contemporary Art”, Prauge

             "The Third Generation", Tel Aviv Museum

2009     “Ararat Express”, Herzliya Biennale, Herzlia Museum of Contemporary Art

             “ We Were Here Before You, Spring 2057“, Ecospheres - International Green festival of art in the environment, Ein Hod

2003     "Exoriente", Stadt Aachen, Germany

2002     "Grid Images in Israeli Art", The Art Gallery, University of Haifa

2000      M.I.T, Boston, "Interaction II, Science and Art", Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver

1998     "White Fire", Robin Sandler Gallery, New Mexico

1993     Cologne Art Fair (Chelouche Gallery)

              "Infusion, New European Art", Icon Gallery, Birmingham; Brighton Museum and Art Gallery Cardiff; The South bank Center,      

              London

             "Trade Routes", The New Museum, New York

1982     "Installations 82" , Museum of Modern Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, U.S.A

1981      Whitney Museum Biennial, New York

1980      M.I.T Boston, "Interaction: Science and Arts"

1979      "Journees Interdisciplinares et Performances", Pompidou Center, Paris

             "Bievan de Kritiek", Internationaal Cultureel Centrum ICC, Antwerp

              Tel Aviv Museum of art, Tel Aviv

1977     Documenta 6, Kassel

             Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

             Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York

              Gallerie Schmela, Düsseldorf

1969     Biennale of young artists, ARC, Paris

             Grabowsky Gallery, London

             Mayfair Gallery, London

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