Fletcher Benton

Fletcher Benton (b. 1931) is a kinetic artist from San Francisco, California.

He was born in 1931 in Jackson, Ohio. Graduated from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1956. From 1964 to 1967 he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and taught as an associate professor and then professor of art at San Jose State University from 1967-1986.

Fletcher Benton is known for his kinetic sculptures which are sculptures that move. But, he began his career as an abstractionist painter in the 1950s and 1960s. Frustrated with the limitations of paint on canvas, Benton began work on movement with geometric pattern pieces and boxes which he was familiar with from his work in commercial signs. This was at the beginning of the kinetic movement and Benton worked largely in isolation, unaware of other efforts of kinetic artists. The early works were more concerned with change, rather than movement. [ [From a museum show catalog entitled: Fletcher Benton, Selected Works 1964-1974, copyright De Saisset Art Gallery and museum, University of Santa Clara] ] The pieces were really more like three-dimensional paintings. Full three-dimensional sculptures designed to be viewed from all angles came later and the movement of the pieces became less prevalent in his later works.

His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Art, Stanford Museum of Art, and the Denver Museum of Art.

Further reading

*cite book |author=Ratcliff, Carter |title=Fletcher Benton: An American Artist |publisher=Hudson Hills Press LLC |location= |year=2008 |pages= |isbn=1-55595-296-8 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=

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