ZIGI BEN-HAIM
Sculptures on SoHo street before heading to Israel museum One Person Show in 1985
Zigi Ben-Haim was born in Bagdad, Iraq and studied in Tel Aviv at The Avni Institute of Fine Arts from 1966 to 1970 before moving to the United States, where he pursued an M.F.A from the San Francisco State University in 1974. Upon moving to SoHo in 1975, he began to incorporate discarded newsprints and industrial paper into his mixed-media abstractions, which he found on the streets of SoHo to construct his formations in paper, 3-dimensional paintings, collages and sculptures. Many of these works are in collections of museums around the world. In the early 1990s, he began to replace the paper with industrial aluminum and has since continued to incorporate this material into his paintings, installations, and sculptures. His conceptual interest is in creating traces of culture and nature as they collide and coincide within his works in order to form a new experience. As the artist has recounted,
I was five years old when my family and I fled my birthplace of Baghdad, Iraq, and immigrated to Israel via Iran. It was in Tel-Aviv where I spent my adolescence and graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1970. Following a solo exhibition as a young artist, the America Israel Cultural Foundation awarded me a scholarship to study abroad. I arrived in California and enrolled in California College of Art in Oakland and San Francisco State University. After graduating and receiving my MFA, I set off for the East Coast and have been living and working in SoHo, New York City since 1975. My multi-layered cultural background and experience inspires my art through the years.
Ben-Haim in his studio in 1975
Ben-Haim has received numerous grants and awards, including from Pollock-Krasner Foundation, National Endowments for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Emily Harvy Foundation Venice, Muestra Int. de Obra Grafica (Spain), and the Ministry of Culture in Israel. His works are included and exhibited in numerous public and private collections around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in N.Y.C., the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Israel Museum, and the Tel-Aviv Museum.
Read an autobiographical recount of his past in The Guardian
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Instagram: @Zigibenhaimstudio