Official Notebook Facsimiles from The Lenkiewicz Foundation

Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002)

Official Notebook Facsimiles from The Lenkiewicz Foundation

(These facsimiles carry a Foundation authentication stamp)

Best known for his life-sized portraits, Lenkiewicz also produced hundreds of smaller works on paper; illustrations and watercolours focussed on particular themes related to his main ‘Projects’.

The first of these was 1974’s Death & The Maiden, which was exhibited in 1974 at Lenkiewicz’s then new Clifton Street studio, The Fool, in Plymouth.

In 1978 Lenkiewicz again created small-scale works on paper to record the extraordinary course of his relationship with ‘Mary’, the young muse who would eventually become his third wife. In 1981, some of the illustrations were framed and shown in the exhibition – The Painter with Mary: a Study in Obsessive Behaviour in his Barbican studio.

All these works were later bound into large folios to preserve them. But showing large-format illustrated books in galleries requires the use of a glass display case, or vitrine. Viewable content at any given time is therefore restricted to one or two pages. However, modern facsimile techniques now make it possible to exhibit the contents of the Lenkiewicz notebooks much as they would have looked when originally shown.

The Lenkiewicz Foundation created the facsimiles shown here for two exhibitions:

Death and The Maiden, 15 July–2 Oct 2011 at Torre Abbey, Torquay.

The Painter with Mary, Plymouth Art Weekender, 25-27 September 2015, at St Saviours Hall, Lambhay Hill, Barbican, Plymouth.

Illustrations:

1. Death & The Maiden exhibition showing works on paper, The Fool gallery 1974.

2. The Death & The Maiden folio (right) on display at Torre Abbey in 2011.

3. Poster for the Mary exhibition, 1981.

4. The Mary folio on display in a vitrine at Plymouth City Museum (Lenkiewicz: the Legacy – Works from The Lenkiewicz Foundation Collection, 8 April – 11 July 2009).