Paul Jenkins (1923-2012)
An American painter living between New York and Paris, Paul Jenkins’ research is deeply focused on color. Painting as colored matter is the subject of his work, nourished by the scientific theories of Goethe and Newton. He regularly renews his practice by devising new ways of showing the properties of color, sometimes fluid, sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque.
Works of art by artist Paul Jenkins
Colette Masson / Roger-Viollet
Paul Jenkins artist biography
Paul Jenkins is an American artist born in 1923 in Kansas City, Missouri. He first studied at the Kansas Art Institute (1937-1942). He then won a scholarship to the Cleveland Play House, a theater school where he focused on set design. World War II interrupted his training. In 1943, he was drafted into the US Naval Air Corps, where he served until 1945. He moved to New York in 1948. He studied at the Art Students League, a famous institution attended by Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein, among other artists. In New York, Jenkins rubbed shoulders with Mark Rothko, with whom he became very close, and who played a major role in the non-figurative orientation of his work. In New York, “Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell. We all hung out together.” At the same time, Jenkins became interested in Eastern philosophies and occultism, another decisive encounter. In this respect, Georges Gurdjieff was not just a fashionable figure in the 1950s, has had a profound effect on Jenkins’ work.
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