Anthony Benjamin was born in Hampshire, after serving a prison term for his objection to the war; he began his career with an engineering apprenticeship. However in 1949 he dropped his job to study art at the Regent Street Polytechnic. Fighting as a professional boxer to fund his painting, he managed to spend three months studying drawing in Paris with Fernand Léger.

He graduated in 1954, exhibiting at the Beaux Arts Gallery. The following year he moved to a cottage on the Cornish moors near St Ives, where he came under the influence of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost. Benjamin joined the Newlyn Society of Artists, where he had his first one-man exhibition in 1958. Hi...