By Paul Jenkins
Located in London, GB
Phenomena Quoth by Paul Jenkins (1923-2012)
Acrylic on canvas
76 x 100 cm (29 ⁷/₈ x 39 ³/₈ inches)
Signed lower center, Paul Jenkins
Signed, titled and dated on the reverse
Executed in 1963-64
Provenance
Kenmore Galleries, Philadelphia
Dr. Theodore A. Feinstein collection
Sotheby's New York, 24th February 1995
Crozier Fine Arts, New York
Private collection, New York
Artist biography
Born at Kansas City in Missouri (USA), the multi-media artist, poet and playwright Paul Jenkins studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York City. After his discharge from military service at the end of February 1946, he briefly studied playwriting with dramatist George McCalmon at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Thereafter, Jenkins spent four years studying with Japanese American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi in New York City. His first solo exhibitions were held at Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris in 1954 and the Martha Graham Gallery in New York City in 1956. Over the past thirty years, numerous retrospectives have been curated across the globe and Jenkins’ work can found in national collections from Europe and the United States to Israel, Australia and Japan.
The diversity of his work springs from Jenkins’ wealth of eclectic influences. Some of his earliest works included what he called "interior landscapes" influenced by ancient natural forms like the caves he visited in the Ozark Mountains in his native-Missouri. Frequent student visits to the Frick Collection in New York fostered a love of the great masters: Bellini, Holbein, Vermeer, Rembrandt, de la Tour, Turner and Goya. In compliment, lingering student visits to the renowned Eastern collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City evoked powerful sympathy for a monumental Chinese fresco of Buddha, polychrome sculptures of the enlightened Bodhisattva, the Buddhist goddess of mercy Kuan-Yin, Indian bronzes of Hindu god Shiva, and statues of meditative Buddhist lohans. Serving in the US Naval Air Corps during the Second World War, Jenkins painted watercolours of Japanese Kabuki dancers and read the ancient Chinese poetic teachings of the I Ching and Lao Tse Tung’s Tao Te Ching...
Category
1960s Abstract Expressionist England - Paintings
