Awareness: Billy Al Bengston

Billy Al Bengston is an American artist. He was born in Los Angeles and attended Los Angeles City College until 1952, where he then studied under Richard Diebenkorn at the California College of Arts and Crafts until 1955. He also studied at the Otis Art Institute in 1956. His first solo exhibition was at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. He was inspired by Jasper Johns and adapted his motifs into his work. Bengston's work is directly tied to the motorcycle sub-culture and auto and surfboard decoration motifs. This work is my favorite of his and I look forward to adapting his style into some of my future works. Although I realize our marks are different, I would still like to utilize his color schemes, blending and composition in the future. Other symbols in his work include the silhouette of an iris. I would also like to use natural forms in my figures as well, and I like the way he contrasts machine with nature themes. He has exhbited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Honolulu Museum of Art. He has received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has permanent collections in Paris, D.C., Chicago, and New York among other places around the world. He is represented by Various Small Fires in Los Angeles. I have not seen his work before, but after a suggestion from a friend, I will definitely look for it when I visit these museums in the future.