Benedict Webb (18 May 1976 – 22 September 2014) was a
Dunedin,
New Zealand-born artist, dividing his time between working in New Zealand and Germany. He was of Māori (Nga Puhi, Te Roroa) and European descent. Ben Webb was the son of New Zealand barrister Maurice James Knuckey (d. 21 November 2018) and New Zealand artist
Marilynn Webb
Marilynn Lois Webb (11 September 1937 – 16 August 2021) was a New Zealand artist, noted for her contributions to Māori people, Māori art and her work as an educator. She was best known for her work in printmaking and pastels, and her work ...
, and grew up surrounded by many of the top New Zealand artists of that country's "golden era" of modern art; among his
godparents was
Ralph Hotere.
Working largely with a mixture of oil and metallic pigments, Webb's work took old photographs as its starting-point. His images are frequently portraits from
Weimar Germany in the years preceding World War II, although he has also employed still lifes as subject matter.
These photographic images are recreated in large format, then distressed by the addition of pigment to form works which evoke strong reactions of melancholy or nostalgia, both in terms of their subject matter and their treatment. His work has been compared to the "gaudily tragic"
Neue Sachlichkeit
The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, who ...
expressionist art of the Weimar era, with portraits of " figures whose faces seem to express the unbearable heaviness of a past trapped behind their eyes,"
creating images of faces that are "feral, yet knowing." His works rely heavily on
chiaroscuro effect, with the
negative space of the blackened backgrounds becoming presences in their own right.
Webb started exhibiting his work at the age of 19, and was the youngest New Zealand artist to have shown in a public gallery and to represent the country in a biennale, in Nouméa in 1999. He held Berlin's
Goethe Institut residency in 2002 and has exhibited in Argentina, Australia, Germany, and Sweden as well as in his native New Zealand. Webb died at
Aramoana on 22 September 2014, aged 38.
References
External links
"Webb's dispassionate treatment unusual" (P. Entwisle, ''Otago Daily Times'' March 4, 2008)"Tintin, Nazi Germany and contemporary art" (P. Entwisle, ''Otago Daily Times'' January 12, 2009)"Glory: Studies by Ben Webb" (D. Eggleton)Artist page, Jonathan Smart GalleryStay Beautiful - an appreciation of Ben Webb's life (N. Benson)
1976 births
Artists from Dunedin
Suicides in New Zealand
2014 suicides
2014 deaths
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