Thomas Hart Benton: Recent Acquisitions

I have a sort of inner conviction that for all the possible limitations of my mind and the disturbing effects of my processes, for all the contradicting struggles and failures I have gone through, I have come to something that is in the image of America and the American people of my time. - Thomas Hart Benton

 

 

 

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) was a great artist and a complex figure.

 

He rebelled against the plans of his father, a U.S. Congressman, for Benton to have a career in politics. Benton left Western Military Academy after a year and enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

He loved to maintain a down-home. folksy persona, despite his socially and politically prominent family. He spent more than twenty years living in New York and studied at the Académie Julian in Paris.

 

Benton taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935. His most famous student, Jackson Pollock, kept in touch with Benson throughout his life. Benton’s influence can be seen in Pollock’s early works. Although Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism” he was a mentor and father figure throughout Pollock’s lifetime.

 

In the 1920s, when Benton painted Landing Boat, 1920-1922. He had already finished a stint in the Navy and toured America, making sketches that he often used as references for his later works. 

 

In 1935, Benton was offered a position at the Kansas City Art Instute to head their painting department. He was also commissioned to create a mural for the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. Both his job at the Art Institute and the mural became subjects of controversy: His mural at the Capitol was viewed as either too critical of Missouri or not critical enough. He lost his job at the Art Institute after showing Persephone, an allegorical nude painting that was considered shocking at the time. 

 

By the time he left the Art Institute, Benton had already made a name for himself and was on the cover on Time magazine in December, 1934.

 

 In 1947, Encyclopedia Britannica filmed Benton creating the Achelous and Hercules mural for the now-defunct Harzfeld's Department Store in Kansas City. The mural has been preserved and is now at the Smithsonian.

 

 

In 1953, Benton began to travel, once again, across America, painting works like Wyoming Mountain Landscape. He continued to receive commissions for murals from major venues throughout the U.S.

 

Throughout all the controversy, Benton remained dedicated to his wife, Rita, to whom he was married for nearly 53 years until his death in 1975. Rita died just eleven weeks after her husband. Their son, Thomas Piacenza Benton, was a musician. Every year, Benton gave their daughter, Jesse Benton, a painting to celebrate her birthday, like Sailboats on the Pond, available at Surovek Gallery.

 

In 1988, filmmaker Ken Burns made a documentary about the complex life and works of Thomas Hart Benton. 

 

For inquiries, please contact Clay Surovek at (561) 655-2665 or clay@surovekgallery.com

June 4, 2026