Robert Oscar Lenkiewicz (31 December 1941 – 5 August 2002) was one of
South West England
South West England, or the South West of England, is one of nine official regions of England. It consists of the counties of Bristol, Cornwall (including the Isles of Scilly), Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Cities and ...
's most celebrated artists of modern times. Perennially unfashionable in high art circles, his work was nevertheless popular with the public.
[Robert Lenkiewicz: Free-thinking social artist]
Mark Penwill, ''The Guardian'', 26 August 2002[Obituary: Robert Lenkiewicz, Francis Mallett and Mark Penwill, ''The Independent'', 13 August 2002] Lenkiewicz is regarded by some as a great painter who is 'finally being recognised as such after all these years of neglect by the art establishment, particularly by London, who would never have him. He didn't really play the game as far as London commercial galleries were concerned. He did his own thing out in the provinces, which was looked down upon.'
He produced as many as 10,000 works (though this figure includes his prolific output as a pencil portrait artist), often on a large scale, and in themed 'projects' investigating hidden communities
Vagrancy 1973Mental Handicap 1976 or difficult social issues
Suicide 1980Death 1982.
In 1981, he faked his own death, announcing his demise to the local newspapers. When Lenkiewicz died in 2002, he left behind a particularly macabre legacy as the embalmed body of one of his friends, a tramp named Diogenes, was found in the cupboard section at the bottom of a bookcase.
The Lenkiewicz Foundation (educational charity) was established in 1997, received the bequest of the painter's remaining collection of works. The artist's voluminous diaries, illustrated notebooks and relationship journals are in the Foundation's collection, which was shown at
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery
The Box is a museum, gallery and archive in Plymouth, Devon, England, opened in 2020 housing a collection of about 2 million items. The core of the building was previously Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery which closed in 2016. The building wa ...
in 2009. The Foundation has curated a number of posthumous exhibitions: ''Self-Portraits 1956-2002'' at the
Ben Uri Gallery
The Ben Uri Gallery & Museum is a registered museum and charity based at 108a Boundary Road, off Abbey Road in St John's Wood, London, England. It features the work and lives of émigré artists in London, and describes itself as "The Art Museu ...
,
Jewish Museum of Art in London in 2008; ''Lenkiewicz: The Legacy – Works from The Lenkiewicz Foundation Collection'' at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in 2009; ''Still Lives'' at the
Royal West of England Academy
The Royal West of England Academy (RWA) is Bristol's oldest art gallery, located in Clifton, Bristol, near the junction of Queens Road and Whiteladies Road. Situated in a Grade 2* listed building, it hosts five galleries and an exhibition progra ...
in Bristol in 2011; ''Death and the Maiden'' at
Torre Abbey
Torre Abbey is a historic building and art gallery in Torquay, Devon, which lies in the South West of England. It was founded in 1196 as a monastery for Premonstratensian canons, and is now the best-preserved medieval monastery in Devon and C ...
, in Torquay later that year; and ''Human, All Too Human'' at the
Royal William Yard
The Royal William Victualling Yard in Stonehouse, a suburb of Plymouth, England, was the major victualling depot of the Royal Navy and an important adjunct of Devonport Dockyard. It was designed by the architect Sir John Rennie and was named af ...
in the artist's adopted city of Plymouth in 2012. This exhibition, in expanded form, travelled to Germany (Spinnerei in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
and AufAEG in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
) in 2013, where it became the first overseas exhibition of the artist's work to date.
Early life
Robert Lenkiewicz was born in London in 1941, the son of refugees who ran a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
hotel in Fordwych Road. Robert Lenkiewicz spent his boyhood in the Hotel Shemtov in Cricklewood, which was run by his parents. His mother was a German baroness and his father a Polish horse breeder who both fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and arrived in London as penniless refugees. Lenkiewicz frequently stated in interview that the hotel's elderly residents included
Holocaust survivor
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...
s but this is contradicted by the artist's brother John, who recollects that the residents tended to be the parents or grandparents of 2nd or 3rd generation
English Jews
The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William the Conqueror. Although it is likely that there had been some Jewish presence in the Roman period, there is no definitive evidence, and no reason to suppose that there was an ...
(for instance, the mother of popular entertainer
Dickie Valentine
Richard Bryce ( Maxwell; 4 November 1929 – 6 May 1971), known professionally as Dickie Valentine, was a British pop singer who enjoyed great popularity in Britain during the 1950s. In addition to several other Top Ten hit singles, Valentine ha ...
), though the hotel's Czechoslovakian cook, Mrs Bobek, was a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen camp. Nevertheless, the loneliness and suffering the young painter witnessed at the hotel was "salutary and thought-provoking" according to Lenkiewicz. Lenkiewicz was inspired to paint after seeing
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was a British actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future ...
in
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda (; born Sándor László Kellner; hu, Korda Sándor; 16 September 1893 – 23 January 1956)[biographical film
A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docud ...](_blank)
''
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally co ...
''. He attended Sir Christopher Wren junior technical school of art architecture and building from 1955 to 1958 graduating in art with distinction. At 16, Lenkiewicz was accepted at
Saint Martin's School of Art
Saint Martin's School of Art was an art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's became part of ...
and later attended the
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purp ...
. However, he was virtually impervious to
contemporary art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...
fashions, being more interested in his favourite paintings in the
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...
.
[
Inspired by the example of ]Albert Schweitzer
Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schwei ...
, Lenkiewicz threw open the doors of his studios to anyone in need of a roof – down and outs, addicts, criminals and the mentally ill congregated there. These individuals were the subjects of his paintings as a young man. However, such colourful characters were not welcomed by his neighbours and he was obliged to leave London in 1964.[
]
Move to Plymouth
He spent a year living in a remote cottage near Lanreath
Lanreath ( kw, Lannreydhow) is a civil parish and a village in southeast Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The village is situated five miles (8 km) west-northwest of Looe. The name Lanreath (pronounced Lanreth) means 'church (Lann) of Rayd ...
in Cornwall, supporting his young family by teaching, before being offered studio space on the Barbican in Plymouth
Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west.
Plymout ...
by local artist and businessman John Nash. The artist's home and studios once more became a magnet for vagrants and street alcoholics, who then sat for paintings. Their numbers swelled and Lenkiewicz was forced to commandeer derelict warehouses in the city to house the 'dossers'. One of these warehouses also served as a studio and in 1973 became the exhibition space for the Vagrancy Project.
He first came to public attention when the media highlighted his giant mural on Plymouth's Barbican in the 1970s. Another furore occurred in 1981 when he faked his own death in preparation for the forthcoming project on the theme of Death (1982): "I could not know what it was like to be dead," said the artist, "but I could discover what it was like to be ''thought'' dead."
Later life and death
After his first exhibition with an established art dealer in the 1990s, Lenkiewicz's work enjoyed growing commercial success and some recognition by the establishment. He received a major retrospective
A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...
in 1997 at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery
The Box is a museum, gallery and archive in Plymouth, Devon, England, opened in 2020 housing a collection of about 2 million items. The core of the building was previously Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery which closed in 2016. The building wa ...
, attended by 42,000 visitors. In his obituary of Lenkiewicz, art critic David Lee observed: "Robert's greatest gift was to show us that an artist could be genuinely concerned about social and domestic issues and attempt the difficult task of expressing this conscience through the deeply unfashionable medium of figurative painting. In that sense, he was one of few serious painters of contemporary history." Lenkiewicz, aged 60, died of a heart attack in 2002. Despite his prolific output, he had only £12 cash in his possession (allegedly having never opened a bank account), and owed £2 million to various creditors. Since his death, examples of his best paintings have fetched six figure sums in London auction rooms.
The rise in Lenkiewicz's popularity was shown in the estate auctions of his personal collection of his own works. At Sotheby's in 2003, Bearnes 2004 and 2008, his paintings and private library raised £2.1 million.
A number of myths have arisen surrounding the artist's unusual barter economics, such as that Lenkiewicz ''never'' paid tax or kept any records of sales of his works; indeed, it is sometimes claimed that he never sold his work at all despite all his exhibition lists now in the public domain bearing prices. It is the case, however, that Lenkiewicz operated a system of patronage whereby a long-term collector or interested buyer would be handed a bill or two to be settled on behalf of the painter. This system operated until the mid-1990s, when the artist began to regularize his financial affairs in negotiation with the HMRC
HM Revenue and Customs (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, or HMRC) is a non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial Departments of the United Kingdom Government, department of the His Majesty's Government, UK Government responsible fo ...
. Subsequent to the painter's death in 2002, media reports put the value of the artist's estate as £6.5 million. This figure included a cursory valuation of the artist's antiquarian library of rare books on witchcraft, the occult, metaphysics and medieval philosophy. However, the sale of this entire collection by Sotheby's in 2003 raised less than £1 million.
Personal life
Lenkiewicz was the father of 12 children, some of whom have become artists in their own right. One of Robert's sons, Reuben Lenkiewicz, runs
gallery in Ashburton
dedicated to his father's work - . The artist provided free lessons in techniques for figurative painting to anyone with aptitude and dedication. Lenkiewicz's pupils include Piran Bishop, Yana Travail, Dan Wheatley, Louise Courtnell, Lisa Stokes, Nahem Shoa and Joe Stoneman.
His step-daughter, with Celia Mills, is playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Rebecca Lenkiewicz (born 1968) is a British playwright and screenwriter. She is best known as the author of ''Her Naked Skin'' (2008), which was the first original play written by a living female playwright to be performed on the Olivier stage of ...
.
Vagrancy Project
The Vagrancy Project consisted of several dozen paintings and drawings of vagrant
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, tempora ...
s and a large book of notes written by the dossers themselves and those involved in their 'care' and control. Lenkiewicz hoped that the exhibition, and the down and outs' own stories, would illuminate the plight of these 'invisible people' and galvanise the community into humane action on their behalf. The format of the 'Project' – combining thematically linked paintings with the publication of research notes and the collected observations of the sitters – was to be used consistently throughout Lenkiewicz's career. Projects such as Mental Handicap (1976), Old Age (1979) and Death (1982) followed the one on vagrancy as Lenkiewicz continued to examine the lives of ostracised, hidden sections of the community and bring them to the attention of the general public.
The Paul Downes
Paul Downes is an English folk guitarist, singer and composer. He has appeared on eight albums with bands, three highly acclaimed solo albums and has over 150 session credits. He has toured every concert venue, theatre and festival in Britain, ...
song "Robert and the Cowboys" was inspired by the project and describes a number of the vagrants.
Other projects
In a parallel line of inquiry, Lenkiewicz also investigated some of society's most persistent taboos in projects such as ''Jealousy'' (1977), ''Orgasm'' (1978), ''Suicide'' (1980) and ''Sexual Behaviour'' (1983). Here, Lenkiewicz often adopted an allegorical pictorial style to portray human physiology ''in extremis''. Lenkiewicz came to the conclusion that the kinds of sensations people felt when a lover abandoned them or when their cherished beliefs were threatened were identical in kind to the 'withdrawal symptoms' and anxieties experienced by addicts or alcoholics over their preferred narcotic. These projects thus became an extended study in 'addictive behaviour' (the title of his 20th, unfinished, project).
The conclusions drawn from his own observations were supported by his private library, which he viewed as a history of 'fanatical belief systems'. Lenkiewicz contended that in the absence of any good reasons for our beliefs or emotions we must always look to human physiology for an explanation of fanatical or obsessive behaviour and that it is there that we shall discover the roots of fascism – the tendency to treat another person as property.
On and off, for nearly 30 years, he worked on his masterpiece, the Riddle Mural in the Round Room at Port Eliot
Port Eliot in the parish of St Germans, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, is the ancestral seat of the Eliot family, whose present head is Albert Eliot, 11th Earl of St Germans.
Port Eliot comprises a stately home with its own church, which s ...
house, home of the Earl of St. Germans, but died before its completion. Half of the mural, in the room, shows death, destruction, insanity, unrequited love, and the apocalyptic end of the world. The other half reflects love and affection, friendships, harmony, proportion and consensus. Hidden in the work are various references to family skeletons, art history and cabalistic mysteries, hence the name – the Riddle Mural.
Library
Over forty years Lenkiewicz built up a library of some 25,000 volumesBibliotheca Lenkiewicziana
/ref> devoted to art, the occult
The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism ...
sciences, demonolatry
Black magic, also known as dark magic, has traditionally referred to the use of supernatural powers or magic for evil and selfish purposes, specifically the seven magical arts prohibited by canon law, as expounded by Johannes Hartlieb in 14 ...
, magic
Magic or Magick most commonly refers to:
* Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces
* Ceremonial magic, encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic
* Magical thinking, the belief that unrela ...
, philosophy, especially metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
, alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world ...
, death, psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and sexuality
Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied wi ...
, preoccupations which surface in some of his paintings. His collection of books on magic and witchcraft was one of the finest in private hands and was largely sold at Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
in 2003, and a substantial part of the remainder of his library was sold at auction
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition e ...
in May 2007 by Lyon & Turnbull.
Further reading
* ''Robert Lenkiewicz: Paintings & Projects'' (Autumn 2006)
* Mark Penwill, Francis Mallett, ''Robert Lenkiewicz: Self-portraits'', White Lane Press, 2008,
* Robert Lenkiewicz (1941–2002): 'Human All Too Human'. Catalogue for exhibition at the Spinnerei, Leipzig, 2013.
References
External links
The Lenkiewicz Foundation
'Lenkiewicz: The Legacy' exhibition at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, 8 April to 11 July 2009
Lenkiewicz.org – non-profit forum with news and discussions
The Lenkiewicz.Book Project – a collaboratively edited guide to the artist, Robert Lenkiewicz
Port Eliot House, St. Germans, Cornwall – home of the Riddle Mural
Current listed gallery sales of Lenkiewicz works
Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood: Biography of Robert Lenkiewicz (1941–2002)
The Reuben Lenkiewicz Art Gallery, The Arts Quarter, Teignmouth
Gallery of over 600 original works
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenkiewicz, Robert
1941 births
2002 deaths
20th-century English painters
English male painters
21st-century English painters
Modern painters
Painters from London
English people of Polish-Jewish descent
English people of German-Jewish descent
British Jews
English Jews
Jewish painters
Jewish artists
People who faked their own death
20th-century English male artists
21st-century English male artists