Beny, Roloff, 1924-1984 : Wilfred Roy Beny was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta. As a young man, he changed his name to Roloff Beny, adopting his mother's maiden name. Upon graduation from the University of Toronto, Beny studied under the master engraver and printer Mauricio Lasansky at the State University of Iowa, graduating in 1947. After continuing his studies at Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Beny was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for printmaking and painting, and travelled throughout Europe with the American School of Classical Studies, 1948-1952.
Beny first exhibited as an artist with the Manitoba Society of Artists. Between 1941 and 1952, he held twenty-five one-man shows, in Canada, New York, Paris, Milan and Florence. Examples of his paintings and graphic art are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Fogg Museum (Boston), Yale University Museum, Knoedler Gallery (New York), the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Galleria Del Milione (Milan), and Redfern Gallery (London).
Although Roloff Beny began his artistic career as a painter and graphic designer, he is best remembered as a photographer of monuments of the ancient and classical worlds, and as the designer of coffee table books.
Beny's first major photographic exhibition came at the invitation of Sir Herbert Read, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England, in 1955. Many other exhibitions followed: A Time of Gods 1962, Metaphysical Moments 1966, Pleasure of Photography 1966, Sculpture of The Renaissance 1967, Image Canada 1967, The Renaissance 1968, A Visual Odyssey 1958-1968 1968, In The Cloister of San Francesco 1974, Iran by Roloff Beny 1975, La Perse - Pont de Turquoise 1977, Patterns of Persia 1978, Roloff Beny In Italy And Canada 1980, Churches of Rome 1981, and Odyssey 1981.
Beny's first published book was a collection of twenty original lithographs, An Aegean Notebook (1950). After he turned to photography, he published many collections of his photographs, some of them companion volumes to his exhibitions, including the following: Thrones of Earth and Heaven (1958), A Time of Gods (1962), Pleasure of Ruins (1964), Japan In Colour (1967), To Everything There Is A Season (1967), India (1969), Island: Ceylon (1971), In Italy (1974), two books on Iran: Persia Bridge of Turquoise (1975) and Iran: Elements of Destiny (1978), Odyssey: Mirror of The Mediterranean (1981), Churches of Rome (1981) and Gods of Greece (1983).
Rajasthan was published posthumously in 1984, and Iceland and The Romance of Architecture in 1985.
The last years of Roloff Beny's life were occupied in the preparation of his "Visual Journals", a proposed book in three volumes about people, architecture and nature, to be accompanied by an autobiographical text. Beny died before the project was completed.
