Zigi Ben-Haim (born 1945 in Baghdad, Iraq) is an American-Israeli painter and sculptor who lives and works in New York City and Israel.

After about one year in Tehran, the family immigrated to the newly established state of Israel, where Ben-Haim grew up.

After completing school and serving in the Israel Defense Forces for three years, he studied at the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv on a scholarship.

With the Israeli economy in recession and not having financially well-off parents to depend on, Ben-Haim found it difficult to establish himself as an artist in Israel and decided to move abroad after receiving another scholarship.

[2] Drawn by the hippie culture of California, Ben-Haim decided to move to the San Francisco Bay Area, settling in Berkeley.