Robert Oscar Lenkiewicz (31 December 1941–August 6, 2002) was one of the South West of England's most celebrated artists of modern times. Deeply unfashionable in high art circles,^{[citation needed]} his work nevertheless drew respect and interest from a public not normally associated with galleries and museums. He painted on a large scale, usually in themed Projects investigating hidden communities (Vagrancy 1973, Mental Handicap 1976) or difficult social issues (Suicide 1980, Death 1982).

A resident of Plymouth, he came to public attention in the media spotlight which was cast upon a 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 of paintings 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." In the 1990s he enjoyed growing commercial success following his first exhibition with an established art dealer. A self-confessed bibliomaniac, Lenkiewicz amassed a private library of some 25,000 volumes on philosophy, erotica, and fascism. The library included one of the finest collections of antiquarian books relating to witchcraft and the occult in private hands. Lenkiewicz saw all his Projects (21 in all) as part of a large-scale investigation into the origins of fascism - the tendency to treat other people as property - and the roots of obsessive and fanatical behaviour.

He was the step-father of Biana Eliot, now the widow of Jago Eliot, Lord Eliot. Lenkiewicz's pupils include Piran Bishop, Handrew Morgan and John Ogden.

By kind permission of White Lane Press © 2006 "Robert Lenkiewicz was born in London in 1941, the son of refugees who ran a Jewish hotel in Fordwych Road whose elderly residents included a number of survivors of the Nazi horror. He was inspired to paint after seeing Charles Laughton play Rembrandt in Alexander Korda’s biopic. At sixteen Lenkiewicz was accepted at St. Martin’s College of Art & Design and later attended the Royal Academy. However, he was virtually impervious to contemporary art fashions, being more interested in his favourite paintings in The National Gallery.

Inspired by the example of Albert Schweitzer, 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. He spent a year living in a remote cottage near Lanreath in Cornwall, supporting his young family by teaching, before being offered studio space in Plymouth. 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.

The perennial outsider, Lenkiewicz’s remarkable body of work enjoyed some recognition by the establishment in later life. He received a major Retrospective in 1997 at Plymouth City Museum, attended by 42,000 visitors. Since his death at the age of 60 on 5 August 2002, examples of his best paintings have fetched ever-rising prices in London auction rooms. 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.'”

[edit] Vagrancy Project

One of three large canvases from the Vagrancy Project and the only one that survives intact. 82 x 202 inches. It is painted from the point of view of the coffin of the recently deceased dosser, John Kynance. © Estate of Robert Lenkiewicz

The Vagrancy Project consisted in several dozen paintings of the vagrants 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 galvanize 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 ostracized, hidden sections of the community and bring them to the attention of the general public.

[edit] 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 ever-expanding private library, which contained large sections on philosophy, theology, fascism, anti-Semitism, the witchcraft phenomenon and the occult, and 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.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Robert Lenkiewicz".

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