Born in London in 1941, Robert Lenkiewic z was the son of refugees who ran a Jewish hotel in north London. The mostly elder ly residents, many of them steeped in the Jewish tradition ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image’, became the painter ’s first sitters. In their company the young Lenkiewicz witnessed often har rowing scenes due to the vic i ssitudes of old age or dement ia, but he described the hotel env ironment as ‘salutary and thought provoking.’ At six teen Lenkiewicz attended St Mar tin’s College of Art & Design and later the Royal Academy Schools. He was however, virtually imper vious to contemporary art fashions, being more interested in his favourite paintings in the National Gal lery by his ar t i stic heroes, Rembrandt, Velázquez and Michelangelo. Inspired by the example of the missionary and philosopher Albert Schweitzer, Lenkiewicz threw open the doors of his Hampstead studios to anyone in need of a roof – down and outs, addicts, criminals and the mental ly ill congregated there. These individuals were the subjects of his paintings as a young man.


Af ter mov ing to Plymouth in 1969, the ar t i st attracted so many vagrants and street alcoholics that he was forced to commandeer derelict warehouses to house them. One of these warehouses also served as a studio and in 1973 became the exhibition space for the Vagranc y Proj e c t. The Vag rancy Proj e c t consisted in paintings of the vagrants and a large book of notes wr itten by the down-and-outs themselves and those responsible for their care and control. The format of the ‘Project’ – combining themat ical ly linked paintings with the publication of research notes and the collected obser vations of the sitters – was to be used consis tently throughout Lenkiewic z’s career. Projects such as Mental Handicap (1976), Old Ag e (1979), Sui cide (1980), and Death (1982), continued to examine the lives of ostracised, hidden sections of societ y.


In a parallel line of inquiry, Lenkiewicz often adopted a metaphorical pictorial st yle to portray human physiology in a state of cri sis in Projects such as Love & Mediocr it y (1976), Jealousy (1977), Orgasm (1978) and The Painter with Mar y (1981). These Projects examined ‘the f al ling in love exper ience’ and led the ar t i st to believe that the physiology of desire itself was ‘the straight road to fasci sm’ – the tendency to treat another person as proper t y. These ideas were invest igated in depth in his eighteenth Project , The Painter with Women: Obs er vations on the Theme of the Doubl e. A par t ial showing on this theme took place at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham in 1994 and attracted over 30,000 people in just over one week.


Robert Lenkiewicz died on 5 August 2002 from a serious heart condition. In his obituary of Lenkiewic z, art critic David Lee observed: ‘R ober t’s gr eat e st gi ft was to show us that an ar tis t could be genuinely conc erned about soc ial and dome s tic issues and attempt the di fficult task of expre ss ing this consc ience through the de eply unfashionable medium of figurative painting. In that sense he was one of few ser ious painters of contemporary his tor y.’


Since his premature death, Lenkiewicz has gained growing recognition as one of Br itain’s most individual and signif icant post-war figurat ive ar t i sts. This has been reinforced by museum exhibitions at the Ben Uri Jewish Museum of Art (2008), Plymouth City Museum (2009), and in 2011 at The Royal West of England Academy and Torre Abbey, the South-west ’s leading her itage centre.


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