Surreal Pastel Paintings Offer a Contemporary Take on Cubism
Twentieth-century artists were boldly experimental and deeply influential, and they continue to inspire contemporary artists today. Chilean painter based in Berlin Pablo Benzo He is one of the artists who championed the historical art movements of the time through his dream-like paintings that capture the past and the present.
Benzo inspired by Cubism and Surrealism Artists who rejected realism and instead looked inward to convey something that spoke to our shared human experience. “For me, 20th-century art is the language of intuition,” Penzo tells My Modern Met. “A time when artists pried open the surface of reality to explore what lay beneath. It was a century of courage, dissolving and reassembling forms through feeling, memory and movement.” The artist adds: “I do not see it as just a historical reference, but rather an emotional legacy.”
In all his works, Benzo plays with perspective, painting “pictures within pictures” in ways that mimic early Cubism. In one piece titled Remnants of an imagined encountertwo paintings depicted in an interior room scene, hung above an abstract sofa and lamp. And in another work entitled Memories fadeBenzo depicts a distorted figure of a male artist painting a female nude on canvas.
Benzo paints what he cannot put into words, such as “sensations, contradictions, and the mystery of quiet presence.” Curved, disjointed and velvety forms depict disproportionate human figures, landscapes and familiar objects devoid of rules. “They live in a space where logic bends and color breathes with its own rhythm,” Pinzo explains.
If you’re in New York, you can experience Benzo’s work up close at… Hole gallery. The five new paintings and six works on paper on paper are influenced by Peggy Guggenheim’s exhibition of the 1940s. Art of this centurywhich helped introduce Surrealism and Cubism to New York audiences. His first solo exhibition in New York, The Time Traveler and Other Fragile Diversionsopens September 5 and runs until October 11, 2025.
Berlin-based Chilean painter Pablo Pinzo reimagines Cubism with his dream-like paintings that evoke the past and present.
Curved, disjointed and velvety forms depict disproportionate human figures, landscapes and familiar objects devoid of rules.
Benzo’s first solo exhibition in New York, The Time Traveler and Other Fragile DiversionsHe displays his latest works at The Hole Gallery.
Exhibition information:
Pablo Benzo
The Time Traveler and Other Fragile Diversions
September 5, 2025 – October 11, 2025
The hole
86 Walker Street, New York City, New York 10013, USA
Pablo Benzo: Instagram
My Modern Met has granted permission to display photographs by Pablo Pinzo.
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