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Paul Jenkins (William Paul Jenkins) was an American artist, famous for his abstract expressionist style of painting. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri in 1923 Jenkins spent his youth working in a ceramics factory. He took several courses at the Kansas City Art Institute where his passion for art began.
In his teenage years, Jenkins moved to Struthers, Ohio to live with his mother where he graduated from Struthers High School. After graduating he went on to serve in the U.S. Maritime Service before joining the U.S. Naval Air Corps during World War II.
Jenkins moved to New York City in 1948, on the G. I. Bill, where he studied at the Art Students League of New York under Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Kuniyoshi gave him free use of his studio during the summers.
In 1953 Jenkins traveled to Europe, exploring Italy and Spain before settling in France. He spent the following years alternating between the hustle and bustle of New York and the cultured streets of Paris. It was at Jean Dubuffet’s exhibition “Terres Radieuses”, held at the La Hune, that Jenkins first met Jean Philippe Dubuffet, the famous French painter and sculptor.
While visiting various museums in Paris, Jenkins was impacted by the dense colours, luminosity and depth in the abstract pastels of Odilon Redon and ébauches of Gustave Moreau. This inspired him to experiment by pouring paints of various thicknesses onto paper and canvas, developing the style of art he is most renowned for.
1954 was a big year for Jenkins, he held his first solo exhibition at Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris where he meet Martha Jackson, Jean Gimpel and various other influential figures in the art market. It was also the year he began adding Winsor Newton pigments and chrysochrome, a thick enamel-based paint, to his poured paintings, adding further depth which enriched the colour density. A year later Jackson included Jenkins work in a group show at her New York gallery. 1955 was another monumental year for the American Abstract artist as he hosted his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery in Seattle. In 1956, only a year after his first event at the Martha Jackson Gallery, Jenkins held his first solo event of the 12 that took place there over the next 21 years.
It was in 1959 that Jenkins began using an ivory knife to guide the flow of paint and titling his works Phenomena followed by a unique title, keyword or phrase. Throughout the sixties, Jenkins continued to travel Europe while working in both Paris and New York. By 1962 he had participated in three group exhibitions at various museums in Paris and one at the Whitney Museum in New York. The following year saw Jenkins exhibit at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. 1963 was also the year that Jenkins obtained a loft on Broadway in New York from Willem De Kooning, which he used as his studio until 2000.
Over his lifetime Jenkins saw his work displayed at over 190 selected solo exhibitions which took place in galleries all across the globe, from Dallas to Paris, Tokyo to Zurich.
Paul Jenkin’s work can be found displayed in various public collections across the United States and Europe, these include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the National Gallery, Washington, DC; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; along with countless other public and private exhibitions.
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