Lynda Benglis trained as a painter at Newcomb College, Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Benglis began to break away from the confines of traditional painting in a rectangular format with canvas support. She began working with wax paintings, poured latex floor paintings and polyurethane foam pieces on the floor and walls.

In 1971, Benglis traveled the country creating six different poured polyurethane foam installations at museums and galleries. The first was Phantom created at the Kansas State University Student Union Gallery in February of that year. 
 
These dramatic installations were created on site, as the liquid material hardened into solid form. Working with a team of assistants, Benglis placed sheets of metal chicken wire against a wall at different heights, covered them in plastic sheeting, then poured layers of pigmented polyurethane foam from paperboard buckets. After the structures hardened, the supporting wire was removed and each sculptural element daringly projected off of the wall. 

Benglis is interested in the physical form of the human body and its relationship to her sculptures. 

While it takes a certain gaze to recognize the sexuality and relationship to the human body of the poured sculptures, Benglis openly talks about them in these terms. They are inherently so and mark an important stage in the development of Benglis’ thinking about these topics.

Her famous Artforum ad of November 1974 confirmed that Benglis was interested in playing with more than gaze and female sexuality. It is human sexuality and the physical human condition that the artist is interested in.

Because of this interest and the sexually explicit nature of her work from 1974 on, New York magazine championed her as one of the central figures of a new movement of Feminists that the magazine dubbed New Sexual Frankness.