Ernst Benkert Sketchbooks and Notebooks Collection

Painter and art educator Ernst Benkert (1928-2010) was a founding member of the Anonima artists group. Benkert was born in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a degree in art history at Harvard and in 1957 started a teaching fellowship at Oberlin College, where he met Edwin Miesczkowski and Vermonter Francis Hewitt. In 1960 the three men founded the Anonima group in Cleveland. The Anonima group members applied the psychology of perception to paintings and drawings through a four-year plan that explored the effects of size change, overlap, brightness ratio, and light and shade. Although Anonima members were committed to working and exhibiting outside the commercial gallery system, they exhibited at museums and their own gallery throughout the 1960s and early 1970s before they disbanded in 1971.

Benkert has been labeled as a hard-edged constructivist and a minimalist. According to art critic Sarah Schmerler, "Benkert ever delights in and experiments with ways to fill a space with a mix of order and chaos." Much of his work, in black and white, is concerned with grid forms, although early and later works incorporate solid shapes. He received numerous fellowships and grants, including the New York State Creative Artists Public Service Award for drawing and the National Endowment for the Arts grant for drawing. Benkert's works are included in permanent collections at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont, the Gray Art Gallery at New York University, and museums in Israel and Denmark. Kentler International Drawing Space presented a retrospective of Benkert's drawings in 2006. Benkert taught studio art and art history at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York from 1966-1990.

Benkert's first connection to Vermont was his Oberlin colleague and Anonima partner, Francis Hewitt, an art professor at the University of Vermont (UVM) from 1970-1992. The Fleming Museum at the UVM organized an Anonima group retrospective in 1971. Benkert lived in Burlington, Vermont from 1985-1998 and taught several classes at the University of Vermont in 1975 and in the 1980s. Benkert's work was exhibited at the Francis Colburn Gallery at the University of Vermont (1987) and St. Michael's College (1994). In 2005, Benkert and University of Vermont professor emeritus Dan Higgins assembled Travel Books, Drawings, Notes and Photographs.

References

Ernst Benkert: Drawings 1959-2005. New York: Kentler International Drawing Space, 2006.

Houston, Joe. Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s. New York: Columbus Museum of Art and London: Merrell Publishers, 2007.

Raleigh, Henry P. "Anonima Group." Leonardo, vol. 2, no. 4 (Oct., 1969): 423-430.