Material worlds: Lynda Benglis
“I feel this in all my work, that I am the material..."
A new exhibition at the Barbican – Lynda Benglis Encounters: Giacometti (until 31 May 2026) – pairs a cross-generational dialogue between two material masters. Benglis is known for fluid sculptures that embrace organic forms; Alberto Giacometti is known for elongated experiments of human bodies. Inspired by the exhibition, this week we’re deep diving into Benglis’s penchant for unconventional materials and how her work connects twentieth-century approaches to contemporary sculpture ….
Material worlds: Lynda Benglis
“I feel this in all my work, that I am the material and what I am doing is embracing it and allowing it to take form…”
– qt Lynda Benglis in Art in America
Latex, metal, foam, glass, paper, ceramics, beeswax: Lynda Benglis builds material worlds. A new exhibition at the Barbican displays a body of previously unseen works by Benglis, alongside her own selection of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures, to open up connections and dialogues across generations. But how do these works fit in with Benglis’s larger career?
Benglis built her reputation on creating poured sculptures, developing her practice alongside the male-dominated New York art scene of the 1960s–1970s. One of the most radical acts throughout her career has been an embrace of non-traditional materials – where action painters threw paint, she opted for a three-dimensional approach that embraced the functional qualities of surprising materials.
In the 1960s, that was latex.
The artist would drop pigmented latex onto art gallery floors, letting the colours ooze and blend in a salute to body fluids. One piece, the 40-foot-long Contraband (1969), exemplifies how Benglis trusted the process, letting the latex skim across the floor in any direction it willed. The pigment’s “skin” exists as it is formed, becoming a hybrid form between painting and sculpture.
In Contraband and beyond, Benglis’s sculptures are a collaboration between artist and material. There is no point in aiming to find ‘mastery’ over the final outcome when – as she put it – “matter could and would take, finally, its own form”.
Revisit our article…
In the 1970s, Beglis began a series of “Sparkle Knot” and pleated sculptures using metal and wire. These difficult materials were transformed into decorative accessories: bows, ruffles, and frills. The contrast between the tricky, scratchy work of knotting metal and the delicate, sparkly results makes a direct comment about the labour that goes into making.
Creating decorative pieces is hard work.
At the time, critics did not know what to make of this contrast, with John Perreault conceding they were “too garish to be pretty and too beautiful to be vulgar”. These girlish, garish, glittery sculptures challenged the prevailing logic of a time that idealised industrial and minimal works. What might seem soft had a hard backbone.
The body is an important tool in Benglis’s work; whether she is using a blowtorch as a paintbruch, tipping buckets of latex, winding mesh into knots, or squishing clay. The act of touch is a crucial element to prod – but not impose – as materials move into place.
The newest works at the Barbican, previously only seen tacked up on the walls of the Benglis’s Santa Fe studio, bring found materials into the mix. The exhibition builds towards the boldest works, beginning in a bone-neutral and monochrome palette that sits comfortably alongside Giacometti’s plaster, clay, and bronze.
Like Benglis, Giacometti was interested in experimenting with material and going deeper into the decorative arts. With interior decorator, Jean-Michel Frank, he created lamps, sconces and vases that showed up in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
Both artists have a shared sensibility when it comes to form, favouring highly textured surfaces and surreal spontaneity.
Revisit our conversation on Surreal Craft:
Entering the Barbican, Benglis’s sculptures hang low from the walls, seeking escape. Fashioned from handmade paper, the artist applies pulp to chicken wire, which peeks through the gaps. These plaster-casts emulate the human body – mimicking bent elbows – but cannot be made whole. Giacometti’s Woman with Chariot centres the opening, a serene, goddess-like figure created amidst the tumult of the Second World War.
As the exhibition narrows, though, such harmony is abandoned as Benglis’s forms feel more akin to Memphis post-modernism – using painted sparkles, acrylic, watercolour, and coal tempera – than early twentieth-century techniques. These are the most exciting pieces by Benglis, which offer a return to the amorphous knots of her early career, covered in glitter and pastel paint, like chewing gum rolled up and spat out. Amongst them, the seeming solidity of Giacometti’s sculptures don’t quite fit, as they slip in-between the carnival of colour.
Overall, though, Bengalis sparks an interesting conversation that unfolds across time, medium, and colour. Benglis’s subtitle for the show – Back At Ya! – speaks to the playful exchange that takes in shared themes of fragmentation, domestic design, memory, humour and horror to form a thread at this meeting of materiality.
Further Reading:
Smithsonian oral history interview with Lynda Benglis (2009)
Book: Lynda Benglis: Beyond Process (2015) by Susan Richmond
Article: ‘Giacometti’s Crumbs – The Decorative Art’s of Alberto Giacometti’