Ib Benoh
Ib Benoh is an American multidisciplinary artist of Syrian-Libyan descent. Benoh's lifelong efforts to break the confines of geographical, cultural, and social boundaries, as he lived across four continents, seeking personal freedom and redefining identity, gave way to a wide range of works. He has worked in painting, sculpture, drawing, two- and three-dimensional construction, traditional and digital printmaking, digital media, poetry, critical writing, and scholarly research.
Since his early artistic life, Benoh exhibited extensively. He had solo and group shows in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy, and the United States, including New York City where he was recognized by Betty Parsons in 1980. Though he left the art market in 1988, Benoh continued focusing on experimental work that led to his breakthrough approach to painting and digital media.
Benoh's early exposure to the way of Infinity, the Sufi practice of oneness that transcends artificial divisions — along with reading extensively on the various philosophical thoughts of the ancient and contemporary scientific approach to understanding oneself and our world — fueled his work over the years. Ideas within the realm of infinity seeped into his work, such as interconnectedness, transformation, regeneration, continuity, variations, boundlessness, expansiveness, motion, timelessness, weightlessness, and nothingness. He creates harmony between the visual and the poetic as his artworks develop simultaneously with his poems.
Early life
Benoh’s parents were Syrian of Libyan descent. His mother, Afifa Abi Al Haj, was a privately educated homemaker. His father, Hasan Bin Nuh, served under Glubb Pasha in the Jordanian Arab Legion. Benoh spent part of his early years in Amman before the family returned to Damascus, where his father assumed the role of overseeing aircraft parts and logistics at a military air base.Benoh’s paternal grandfather, Ibrahim Bin Nuh, after whom he was named, was an olive oil producer and headmaster of a high school in Khoms, Libya. He died not long after fleeing his homeland to evade capture by the Italian invaders for his role in funding the resistance.
Though his family lived in humble surroundings, Benoh had a culturally vibrant upbringing, one filled with art, poetry, music, literature, and storytelling. His mother often played the oud and sang during family gatherings. One of his earliest memories includes spending Thursday evenings watching and imitating the Sufis next door as they chanted and performed ritual spinning.
Growing up, Benoh exhibited a ferocious appetite for literature. He had access to the personal library of his late maternal grandfather, Adeeb Abi Al Haj, a judge, who left behind a notable collection that included handwritten and hand-illustrated volumes. Benoh dedicated time each day after school to self-education, reading extensively on a wide range of subjects, including medicine, science, regional and international law, the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, poetry, and the philosophical works of Sufi thinkers and other intellectuals.
In addition to reading, Benoh devoted much of his time during his teenage years to writing, drawing, and painting. He wrote short stories, plays, poetry, as well as personal reflections and observations. Benoh often painted outdoors on the banks of the Barada River, using its water to hydrate his watercolor paints, and developed a personal ritual of sending his finished paintings downstream, watching as his artwork gradually disappeared.
Benoh grew up in a family of artists. His maternal grandmother created quilts. She involved him in gathering scrap fabrics from friends and family and had him select the cut pieces for her designs. Benoh’s maternal uncle Mahmoud Jalal was a respected artist in the region. Growing up, Benoh dreamt of traveling to Rome to study at the art academy just like his uncle and cousin Khaled Jalal had done before him.
As his appetite for learning new skills grew, Benoh actively sought instruction. Not finding a local source, he enrolled in a mail correspondence program with an art school in Paris. His first major purchase with his allowance was a book on Renaissance art, his prized possession, which he cherished and diligently studied. Adding to his daily independent activities, Benoh began dabbling with clay sculpting. His insatiable appetite for growing his artistic skills was finally satisfied when he enrolled at a newly established art center in downtown Damascus.
Early sculptures and exhibitions
At thirteen, Benoh began his formal artistic training in sculpture and drawing at the Center of Fine Arts of Damascus, where volunteer instructors were art faculty from the Damascus University, including Nassir Shoura, Aziz Ismail, Ghyath al-Akhras, Abdulsalam Kattramis, and Benoh’s uncle Mahmoud Jalal. The art center became Benoh’s home away from home for the next eight years. Inevitably, he made friends with the maintenance man who would unlock the doors for him to work on his sculptures at odd hours. Seeing his dedication, the center eventually allocated one room for Benoh to work on large-scale sculptures independently. Benoh was introduced to Western classical music as he sculpted and drew from life at the center.While maintaining his love for Arabic literature, Benoh also discovered works by international writers and read Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, and Ernest Hemingway extensively, as well as existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
During the years of his academic training at the art center, Benoh participated in yearly group exhibitions held by the art centers of major cities in Syria, including a 1968 group show with one of his larger-than-life sculptures exhibited at the National Museum of Damascus. As a practicing artist, he gained membership at the Damascus Artists Association of Fine Arts in 1971.
In 1970 Benoh was offered a prestigious sculpture commission for Damascus. With the help of four assistants who were masonries by trade, Benoh constructed a 13-meter enlarged relief replica of Assyrian Lion Hunts.
In his early twenties, Benoh was on his way to become one of the leading sculptors in the region. However, soon after completing the commission, Benoh left Syria to pursue other dreams.
Along with his interests and activities, Benoh’s interactions with mystics, artists, poets, and intellectuals in a free and politically unrestricted environment during the 50s and 60s in Damascus, laid the ground for his mature work ahead.
Public commission for the city of Damascus
Self-exile
In his early twenties, Benoh seized an opportunity presented by the brief period of open borders during the Federation of Arab Republics — the short-lived union between Egypt, Syria, and Libya. Feeling trapped in an increasingly repressive Syria, he self-exiled to Libya, a one-way ticket and cardboard suitcase in hand. There, he reconnected with his family roots in Khoms and Tripoli and found community witnesses who had known his grandparents — a crucial step in securing Libyan citizenship. With that came his first passport. That document became a lifeline, allowing him to travel internationally. By the late 1970s, he had moved to the United States, where he later became a naturalized American citizen — his second passport and a new beginning.Early paintings and exhibitions
While in Libya, Benoh became active in the local art scene, working in the Unity of Fine and Plastic Arts department within the Ministry of Culture in Tripoli.He sporadically published satirical cartoons and some of his written works. In his published contribution, "Truthfulness in Children's Art," written for the All Arts magazine, Benoh spoke of the overpowering directive methods in early art education having hindering effects on the natural creative act of a child.
Living in a new environment, filled with bright colors and North African light, Benoh fully engrossed himself in experimental painting in gouache and later acrylics. Fascinated with the openness of Tripoli to the Mediterranean Sea, he abstracted from life the ever-changing movement of the waves, capturing the energy of the natural elements through large brushstrokes. He participated in regional group exhibitions with his new paintings and represented Libya in significant art events outside the country. Years later, he would reflect that, at the time, he was unaware of Modern Art in America.
Selected works from 'The Sea' series: Tripoli
Living in Rome and first solo exhibition
In 1973, Benoh finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of studying in Rome at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under artist and professor Marcello Avenali.While living in Rome for the next four years, Benoh produced paintings reminiscent of his joyful childhood, influenced by North African heritage and African light and colors. He exhibited these brightly contrasting works in his first solo show held in Rome.
During this prolific time, Benoh painted at his studio and frequented the local social hot spots to draw daily at the cafes and restaurants, sharing communal tables with other creatives, including painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and poets.
In his final year in Rome, Benoh published "L'Arte Infantile," his thesis, expanding on his affinity for the early stages of creative development from scribbling to the interruption of academic shaping.
Selected works from 'Dreaming of North Africa' series: Rome
Coming to the United States and US debut solo show
The following year, Benoh moved to the U.S. to live and study after being accepted into top art schools. He initially settled in New Canaan, Connecticut, painting daily in preparation for an upcoming solo show. Benoh's acrylic paintings on canvas rapidly took on a new direction. Complex abstracted imagery resembled a colorful dream world. He began incorporating written rhythmic, poetic statements into his ink drawings on paper. This new body of work, consisting of poetry-infused ink drawings and paintings of whorls of colors, was presented at his US debut solo show at Carriage Barn Gallery, New Canaan, Connecticut.Benoh's lifelong concern is harmony between people, species, and the environment. Some of his earlier drawings contain handwritten meditative prose, incorporated into the design, one of which with the motto, "Don't kill the whales' in several versions in the tail of a representation of the sea mammal." Another of Benoh's one-line ink drawings depicts a hunchback, along with several variations of a poem that ask not to blame the hunchback for being a hunchback. The artist's paintings, shown accompanied by the drawings in his 1978 exhibition, ''"are expressive of Benoh's philosophy of universal love."''