Barton Lidicé Beneš

1942 – 2012
American

Barton Lidicé Beneš was a New York sculptor who worked with materials he called “artifacts of everyday life.” He used the mementos of childhood in his early work and later made sculptures from unconventional materials, including cremation ashes, shells, bodily fluids, currency, relics, celebrity artifacts, and found objects. He often blended political activism, visual poetry, and humorous puns to create provocative pieces that confronted issues he was passionate about, particularly the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. His artwork became an outlet to express his frustrations and feelings as an artist living with HIV.

Beneš was born in Westwood, New Jersey, in 1942 and studied at the Pratt Institute in New York in the early 1960s. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Cleveland Museum of Art; North Dakota Museum of Art; Katonah Museum of Art; New York Public Library; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as internationally at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Boras Konstmuseum, Sweden; and Old Town Hall, Prague. His work is in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Smithsonian, The U.S. Mint, and the North Dakota Museum of Art. Beneš died in 2012.