Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2010 - 38

Fashion models pose with Benda's masks for Vogue.

"Exotic" mask being unpacked for USITT exhibit.

early masks

Images of Women
This was the period in which American women began to establish their place in politics and culture. The suffragette movement
was gaining momentum and women would earn the right to vote
in 1920. The end of the World War I in 1918 heralded the beginning of the Roaring Twenties and the era of the youthful flapper
redefined modern womanhood. Publishers quickly recognized
the increasing influence and purchasing power of the American
woman and appealed to their feminine readers through images
of confident attractive women whom they could emulate through
the purchase of their advertised products and services.
Many commercial artists like Harrison Fisher, Coles Phillips, and Howard Chandler Christy became famous for depicting
fresh faced "All American Girls." Unlike his contemporaries,
benda, the only immigrant in the above named group, specialized in women who exuded a mysterious foreign sensuality,
often dressing his models in native costumes and props. His
illustrations, while clearly showing the influence of his pictorial
training, also integrated the sinuous graphic qualities of the Art
Nouveau Secessionist movement with the emergent geometric
Art deco style.

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benda's interest in masks began in 1914 when he created a paper mask for a masquerade party. In a 1926 article for Ladies
Home Journal he reflected, "I made one by gluing together
variously shaped pieces of heavy wrapping paper." After the
masquerade was over he tossed the mask away, but the next day
retrieved the crude face from the waste can and over the course
of "thirty odd evenings" reconstructed it into an ornamental
wall hanging entitled "the blue demon." by 1918 he had twelve
more masks in his studio and his exploration of mask making
techniques was under way (American Art Archives).
In 1921 benda married Romola Campfield, a figure model
he used for many of his illustrations and later his photographic
mask studies. Romola, who saw herself as an amateur actress,
encouraged his work with masks and enjoyed wearing and performing with them in their Gramercy Park apartment. They had
two daughters, Eleonora and basia, who, fostered in this aesthetic atmosphere, grew up to become artists in their own right.
Eleonora became a magazine illustrator like her farther and
later an art teacher while basia became an architect.
benda made the first masks for his own amusement but as
he quickly gained skill as a mask maker he chose to exhibit two
of his masks in the New York Architectural league's annual exhibition. Members of the Comedy Club subsequently created a
series of masked pantomimes performed in the private theater
of rubber tire mogul Charles C. Goodrich. benda's hobby took
a significant turn when in 1920 the social tastemaker and powerful editor of Vanity Fair Magazine, Frank Crowninshield,
visited benda's Gramercy Park studio where he reflected, "In
the warm, enveloping light of the waning afternoon, the masks
seemed as worn by the mysteriously robed artist [benda], to
move; to change with precisely the moods and reactions of living beings." Crowninshield arranged for the masks to be photographed and exhibited in several consecutive issues of Vanity
Fair. Then, at Crowninshield's urging, noted essayist John Jay
Chapman wrote a series of vignettes for benda's false faces for

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2010