One of the most influential designers of the last century, Ward Bennett can be considered the inspiration behind the trend that took the name of “minimalism.” He was as important as Billy Baldwin in his influence on other designers, but far less celebrated, and little-known to the general public. With virtually no formal education, Bennett became adept and successful in a variety of design disciplines, ranging from fashion and jewelry design to sculpture and department-store display, as well as interiors that established a new direction for modernism. Born in New York in 1917 as Howard Bennett Amsterdam, he dropped out of high school and left home to embark on a peripatetic career: working first in display and fashion, moving to Europe to study art, serving in the Army during World War II, spending time California designing store displays, and in Mexico making sculpture and designing jewelry, and finally returning to New York in 1950 to settle into a career in what he described as “interior architecture.” An idiosyncratic personality, he worked with only one assistant, maintaining his office in his much-photographed apartment in New York’s historic Dakota apartment building. His rigorous aesthetic of mostly-white, sculpted spaces, sparely furnished and meticulously accessorized, were striking examples that established a new standard of intellectually-precise and rigorously-planned interiors. His furniture and textile designs for Brickel Associates, beginning in 1963, included seating pieces that have become classics of contract furniture interiors (several are still being produced by Geiger). He taught at Pratt and Yale, passing on his design vocabulary to what would become the most important generation of modern interior designers.
From NYSID's Judith Gura
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