Robert Lenkiewicz
I wore a flight suit and sported bleached hair as I nervously entered the dark creaky Aladdin’s cave that was Robert Lenkiewicz’s Barbican studio in Plymouth. It was 1983 and I was a seventeen year old graphic design student at Plymouth Art School. I was on an exploratory trip, with a couple of others from my class, to find out what all the fuss was about. My landlady who housed me with her family in the repetitive post-war grey estate of Crownhill, had a sketch of her grandchild on the wall which she had paid a paltry £1.50 for. This picture of innocence by Plymouth’s adopted son, Robert Lenkiewicz, seemed to contrast sharply with his then current project: Sexual Behaviour. Here was an extraordinary display of technically fluid and free painting. Sometimes crafted tight, sometimes free and effortless and always exciting. The content of this project had raised more than a few eyebrows in the City with titles such as ‘Artist rutting with Goat’. But shackled by the vestiges of post-punk youthful rebellion I had entered a world of anti-establishmentarianism and beautiful expression.
I wanted to know how this man had managed to straddle the cultural and social divides to be exhibited simultaneously in the living room of Mrs Bailey as well as under the scrutiny of the art world. But I was passing through and once I made it to London to begin the next phase of my life I had left Robert behind in Plymouth with Cap’in Jasper and his ‘Mugs of Tea for 10p’.
Robert Lenkiewicz was born in London 1941 and attended St Martin’s College of Art & Design and later the Royal Academy. Apparently inspired by Albert Schweitzer, Robert welcomed anyone in need of a roof to take refuge in his studio. He befriended tramps, addicts and all manner of colourful people that became the subject of his many projects including; Mental Handicap and Vagrancy. His challenge to the establishment included feigning his own death in the early eighties as well as securing possession of the embalmed corpse of vagrant Edwin McKenzie, known as Diogenes, because he lived in a barrel on a Plymouth rubbish tip.
I was always amazed that nobody appeared to have heard of Robert Lenkiewizc beyond Marsh Mills roundabout on the exit to Plymouth. I was therefore delighted to rekindle my love for his work when strolling passed The Halcyon Gallery in Birmingham with an old school friend some years later. I took a trip to Plymouth in 2003 and found that Robert had just died of a heart condition. My pilgrimage took in the now locked studios in The Barbican, his gallery next door and the tragically neglected mural by Robert adorning a huge wall facing a block of retirement flats. I found a gallery owned by Paul Sommerville, an agent for Robert, and spent an hour chatting. I was thrilled to come away with a beautiful sensitive drawing of his son Rubin. I coveted an oil painting by the master and attended the auction of a vast collection of paintings organised by the executors of Robert’s estate, at Sotherby’s in London, where I once again met Paul. The auction had hardly broken stride, when alas, I had to return to my office in Chelsea Harbour to attend a board meeting.
It was another four years before I made it down to Paul’s gallery again and on this occasion I came away with a study in oils from Project 18: ‘The Artist with Women’.
For your free spirit, your absolute artistry and for creating such a rich and inspiring legacy – Thank you Robert Lenkiewicz. I never spoke with you in your gallery that day because I didn’t know what to say, but Paul has filled me in on some of the down low.
Graham Dodridge, December 2007