Benigna Chilla, born in 1940, began her studies in Germany at the Folkwangschule für Gestaltung in Essen. She received her "Meisterschüler" in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin. As a student of Bauhaus professors, she studied a broad range of skills, from typesetting to drawing, sculpture, and printmaking.
Chilla moved to the United States in 1969, completing her graduate studies at the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has held residencies at Yaddo, the Djerassi Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Chilla has taught at institutions such as Cornell, Brown, Berkshire Community College, RISD, VAST in Bhutan, and the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad and National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Kolkata, India. She has had over forty solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
Chilla's process as an artist begins with inspiration from geometric patterns found in architecture, textiles and nature. She draws on her range of expertise to explore the world through her creative practice. Of late, she collects fragments of textile which are adhered to the canvas and become the seed from which the painting is constructed.
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