Roberto Benavidez
Roberto Benavidez is a figurative sculptor originally 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, ephemerality, 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.’ One of Benavidez’s ‘Painting Piñatas’ was on display in all LA Metro buses under the ‘Through the Eyes of Artists’ poster series. Another landscape was on view at LAX Terminal 1.5 in Craft in America’s ‘LA Scenes’ exhibition.
