Robert Oscar Lenkiewicz
Artist Biography
Born in London in 1941, Lenkiewicz spent his early childhood in Cricklewood, London at the hotel run by his Jewish parents. Exposed at an early age to the suffering and solitude of the residents, of which some were Holocaust survivors, Lenkiewicz was soon to find this thought provoking and a profound influence on his later work.
Whilst attending Sir Christopher Wren Technical School of Art between 1955-58, he was accepted at Saint Martin’s School of Art at 16, later attending the Royal Academy.
His social conscience resulted in the doors to his studio being thrown open to people in need of shelter, amongst them addicts, the mentally ill and homeless. He left London in 1964 and after briefly teaching in Cornwall he was offered a studio on the Barbican in Plymouth by a local benefactor. He commandeered derelict warehouses and he was able to accommodate the masses of people that came to rely on his shelter. One of his first exhibitions in 1973, the ‘Vagrancy Project’ Projects 1 and 1a, was shown in one of these warehouses.
Exhibitions and commercial success soon followed and by the 1990s a major retrospective had attracted close to 50,000 visitors at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.
Lenkiewicz painted many projects on society’s taboos, including ‘Death’ (15), ‘Orgasm’ (9), ‘Jealousy’ (8) and ‘Sexual Behaviour’ (16). In all over 24 projects were studied before his death in 2002.
A project to which Lenkiewicz devoted many years was Project 18 ‘The Painter With Women’, a huge study on his own and other peoples relationships. Prior to this he had probed deeply into his obsessional behaviour in Project 14 ‘The Painter With Mary’, his wife. Adjacent to this, Robert created ‘The Mary Notebook’ .
He was a maverick; a colourful character and a man who was genuinely concerned about social and domestic issues, who went through the medium of painting to express his conscience. He didn’t paint a portrait of a vagrant or addict just to give them money or a meal. He genuinely cared for his subjects in a nurturing sense.
Whilst attending Sir Christopher Wren Technical School of Art between 1955-58, he was accepted at Saint Martin’s School of Art at 16, later attending the Royal Academy.
His social conscience resulted in the doors to his studio being thrown open to people in need of shelter, amongst them addicts, the mentally ill and homeless. He left London in 1964 and after briefly teaching in Cornwall he was offered a studio on the Barbican in Plymouth by a local benefactor. He commandeered derelict warehouses and he was able to accommodate the masses of people that came to rely on his shelter. One of his first exhibitions in 1973, the ‘Vagrancy Project’ Projects 1 and 1a, was shown in one of these warehouses.
Exhibitions and commercial success soon followed and by the 1990s a major retrospective had attracted close to 50,000 visitors at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.
Lenkiewicz painted many projects on society’s taboos, including ‘Death’ (15), ‘Orgasm’ (9), ‘Jealousy’ (8) and ‘Sexual Behaviour’ (16). In all over 24 projects were studied before his death in 2002.
A project to which Lenkiewicz devoted many years was Project 18 ‘The Painter With Women’, a huge study on his own and other peoples relationships. Prior to this he had probed deeply into his obsessional behaviour in Project 14 ‘The Painter With Mary’, his wife. Adjacent to this, Robert created ‘The Mary Notebook’ .
He was a maverick; a colourful character and a man who was genuinely concerned about social and domestic issues, who went through the medium of painting to express his conscience. He didn’t paint a portrait of a vagrant or addict just to give them money or a meal. He genuinely cared for his subjects in a nurturing sense.
