Lenkiewicz: The Legacy - Works from the TLF Collection
Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery
8 April - 11 July 2009

Illustrated: Diogenes and Belle at Prayer with Chairs. 1974.

The first ever showing of the legacy of artistic works that the artist bequeathed to the Lenkiewicz Foundation upon his death in 2002.

Museum exhibition to showcase the legacy of Lenkiewicz

A new exhibition of works by Robert Lenkiewicz, which opens at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery on Wednesday 8 April, will present the first ever showing of the legacy of artistic works that the artist bequeathed to the Lenkiewicz Foundation upon his death in 2002.

‘Lenkiewicz: The Legacy’ will offer a first glimpse of the works now held within The Lenkiewicz Foundation’s collection, and will remain on display until the end of Saturday 11 July. The show is set to provide a thought-provoking insight into the ideas and inspiration behind his work and show a side of his creativity that is seldom seen.

“The name of Robert Lenkiewicz is synonymous with large easel paintings and huge public murals, yet from the early 1970s he also produced an extraordinary archive of works on paper, otherwise known as ‘Aesthetic Notes’, which have rarely been on public display,” explains Anna Navas of The Lenkiewicz Foundation.

“These startling pictures, usually watercolours, are characterised by hand written notes, which range from philosophical observations to private revelations. Lenkiewicz reserved some of his most extraordinary insights and accomplished painting for these works, which were often bound into themed notebooks relating to his major Projects.”

‘Lenkiewicz: The Legacy’ will feature these framed Aesthetic Notes along with the Project Notebooks themselves and the charity's collection of large easel paintings.

“Almost every work in the Lenkiewicz Foundation’s archive will be on show together for the first time and the exhibition should be both moving and challenging by turns,” says Acting Exhibitions Officer, Emma Philip. “The Museum is pleased to be working with The Lenkiewicz Foundation to host this important show, which gives the public a rare chance to see another side of one of Plymouth’s foremost artists.”

Robert Lenkiewicz:
A Plymothian's Perspective
Plymouth City Museum
Tuesday 12 May

Speaker: Chris Robinson

Illustrated: Robert Lenkiewicz seated in front of The Barbican Mural in 1977.

Local historian and broadcaster, Chris Robinson, discusses Lenkiewicz's impact on the city of Plymouth. Muralist, portrait painter, controversialist, Robert Lenkiewcz left an idelible impression on the city from his arrival in 1966 to his death in 2002. Using a large selection of slides, Chris Robinson charts the artist's progress from "free-thinking, post-hippy portrait painter" to "one of the best, and probably the most prolific, portrait painters of the twentieth century".

Lenkiewicz: The Debate
Private view and open forum debate
Plymouth City Museum
Tuesday 23 June, 6.30-9.00pm

What are your views on censorship? Must public art exhibitions be ‘family-friendly’, or should broader tastes be catered for? Do different standards apply to an ‘artistic vision’ than to other kinds of material? Is some of Lenkiewicz’s work better off hidden from public view?

Lenkiewicz: The Legacy is not a complete showing of available work. Approximately 10 works on paper were removed from the exhibition by Plymouth City Museum over the protests of The Lenkiewicz Foundation as being unsuitable for display in the context of the Museum’s family-friendly exhibition program. These works were displayed for one day only during the exhibition (on 23 June) to give visitors a chance to assess the material for themselves.

TLF have made this work available as a PDF document to download here (file size 2.7MB).