Art and designזיגי בן חיים

Zigi Ben-Haim

Zigi Ben-Haim is an Israeli-American painter and sculptor, born in Baghdad in 1945, who lives and works in New York.

born 1945Painting and sculptureLeaf motif in his workPublic sculptures in New York and IsraelWorks commissioned by NASA

Occupation: painter, sculptor
Education: Avni Institute of Art and Design, California College of the Arts

Zigi Ben-Haim was born in 1945 in Baghdad

Zigi Ben-Haim was born in 1945 in Baghdad to an Iraqi Jewish family. As a child he fled with his family to Iran, and after about a year in Tehran they moved to Israel. The family lived in Ramat Gan, where he grew up.

He served in the IDF for 3 years, in the Shaked reconnaissance unit. From 1966 to 1970 he studied art at the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv on a scholarship.

Finding it hard to make a living as an artist in Israel, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and settled in Berkeley. He studied at California College of Arts and Crafts and earned an MFA from San Francisco State University in 1974. He moved to New York City in 1975, became a US citizen in 1979, and married Tsipi in 1980.

He held solo shows at the Israel Museum in 1984 and the Jewish Museum in New York in 1987. NASA commissioned work from him in 2005 and in 2013. His works are held in collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and his public sculptures stand in New York and Israel.