Chilean, painter born in Santiago in 1950, author of a work which has undergone an interesting evolution from the collage, and a painting halfway between abstract art and figurative art, to the definition of a style that mixes both languages. Lira has developed most of his career in the United States. Benjamín Lira relationship with the art world began at age eleven, when he/she began attending as student free seminars at the Museum of contemporary art, and continued with the private lessons he/she received from artists Rodolfo Opazo and Mario Toral. After leaving in 1970 the career of architecture, which had begun the previous year in the Catholic University of Chile, he/she studied drawing and painting at the Academy of fine arts of San Fernando in Madrid, and that same year conducted his first solo exhibition, at the Instituto Cultural Las Condes in Santiago. In 1971 he/she returned to Europe to enter the London School of art Bryan Shaw, in which he/she remained until 1973. In 1977, as a result of winning a competition for young values, he/she was granted a scholarship Fulbright which was able to continue studies at the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York and get in the Center the title of master in fine arts (1979); established since then in the New York metropolis, his works could be exposed in galleries Leila Taguinia Milan (1984) and Ruth (1988 and 1990) Sieguel of this city, as well as other centers in Boston, Miami, Lima and Santiago de Chile. In 1991 presented at the capital Gallery of Jorge float Chilean exhibition entitled five years of painting, 1985-1990, and after several years without news of their work, in 1996 returned to display two different samples: travel diary, in the gallery the horse green of conception, and paintings and recent collages, in the AMS Malborough Gallery of Santiago. Despite the prolonged stay abroad, Lira has always enjoyed a deserved recognition and prestige in his country, where he/she was awarded the critics Prize in 1987. Several of his works were also joined the collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes of Chile. The work of Benjamín Lira presents two different styles in terms of the formal language. On the one hand, submerged in the objectual experience or collage, the incorporation of various objects to a support (caps, keys, spurs, etc), or the own construction work from pieces of paper, books, and even other unfinished paintings covers; in this type of expression Lira brings more imaginative in his artistic feeling and intimate facet. The purely pictorial work shows greater ties of marriage with contemporary international trends, with abstract paintings characterized by large areas of very saturated colors; on the other hand, is much more personal treatment of the human figure, whose form of representation, profile, or only the head, and the relationship with the space that surrounds it, have become central theme of his speech.