"Blue & Orange" 1960, hard edge painting, signed and dated lower right, oil on canvas. Exhibited at the Esther Robles Gallery, retains gallery label verso. Provenance: Private collection, California. Karl Benjamin was a painter of dazzling geometric abstractions who established a national reputation in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles-based Abstract Classicists and created a highly acclaimed body of work. Using a full palette and a vocabulary of stripes, squares, triangles, circles, rings and irregular shapes, he created tightly balanced compositions that seem to shimmer, vibrate or explode in space. Benjamin's work fell out of fashion in the 1970s and '80s, but he made an astonishing comeback in later years when his paintings suddenly looked fresh and smart to younger artists, critics and curators. Overall Size: 24 3/4 x 31 in. Sight Size: 24 x 30 in.