Roberto Benavidez

Robert Benavidez is a figurative sculptor from South Texas specializing in the piñata form. After moving to Los Angeles, he rediscovered his passion for the visual arts and studied figure sculpting and bronze casting at Pasadena City College. Benavidez later switched to paper, a more accessible material than bronze, deciding to focus on the piñata technique, a familiar form from childhood. Benavidez plays with underlying themes of race, ephemerailty, beauty and sin, layered with his identity as a mixed-race queer artist, with a focus on impeccable craftsmanship. Some of his otherworldly creatures could have stepped out of Hieronymus Bosch’s, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Benavidez’s fantastical sculptures have been featured in national, international and on-line publications, including Artsy, Atlas Obscura, hifructose.com, Hyperallergic, Politiken, and This Is Colossal. He has exhibited his work in numerous group and solo shows, including at Riverside Art Museum, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum and Palo Alto Art Center, to name a few.  Currently one of Benavidez’s ‘Painting Piñatas’ is on display in all LA Metro buses under the ‘Through the Eyes of Artists’ poster series and another landscape is on view at LAX Terminal 1.5 in Craft in America’s LA Scenes exhibition.