Zigi Ben-Haim is an Israeli-American sculptor born in Bagdad, Iraq. At the age of five his family fled the country to Israel via Iran. Ben-Haim spent most of his adolescence in Tel-Aviv and studied at The Avni Institute of Fine Arts from 1966 to 1970. After he moved to the United States, he enrolled in the California College of Arts & Crafts in 1971 and received an M.A. from J.F.K. University in 1973 and an M.F.A from the San Francisco State University in 1974. In 1975 he became a U.S. citizen, and has been living and working in New York’s SoHo, ever since. In the early 1970s, Ben-Haim used discarded newsprints and industrial paper, 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, industrial aluminum material replaced the found paper. He has been creating paintings, 3D installations, indoor, and outdoor sculptures until today. From time to time, he finds himself experimenting with other materials like concrete, film, ropes, and burlap to make his conceptual point, creating footprints of culture and nature as they collide and coincide to form a new experience. Ben-Haim received many awards and grants from institutions including 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, the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Israel Museum, and the Tel-Aviv Museum.
Zigi Ben-Haim
Studios
Eastman
Zigi Ben-Haim worked in the Eastman studio.
Thanks to the generous support of MacDowell Fellow and board member Louise Eastman, this century-old farm building was reinvented as a modern, energy efficient live and workspace for visual artists. Originally built in 1915 to house a forge and provide storage when the residency program was expanding, this small barn was simply converted for…