Paul Jenkins On Sale

Born in Kansas City, the multimedia artist, poet and playwright Paul Jenkins began his studies at Kansas City Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York City. After his discharge from military service at the end of February 1946, he briefly studied playwriting with dramatist George McCalmon at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Thereafter, Jenkins spent four years studying with Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi in New York City. His first solo exhibitions were held at Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris in 1954 and the Martha Graham Gallery in New York City in 1956. Over the past 30 years, numerous retrospectives have been curated across the globe and Jenkins’s work can be found in national collections from Europe and the United States to Israel, Australia and Japan. 

The diversity of Jenkins’s work springs from a wealth of eclectic influences. Some of his earliest works included what he called "interior landscapes” influenced by ancient natural forms. Frequent student visits to the Frick Collection in New York fostered a love of the great masters, while trips to the renowned Eastern collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City evoked powerful responses to a monumental Chinese fresco of Buddha, polychrome sculptures of the enlightened Bodhisattva, the Buddhist goddess of mercy Kuan-Yin, Indian bronzes of Hindu god Shiva and statues of meditative Buddhist lohans. Serving in the US Naval Air Corps during the Second World War, Jenkins painted watercolours of Japanese Kabuki dancers and read the ancient Chinese poetic teachings of the I Ching and Lao Tse Tung’s Tao Te Ching, described by him as "masterpieces in simplicity.” Jenkins’s discovery of psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s book Psychology and Alchemy was as illuminating for his practice as were formative meetings with dancer Martha Graham, architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Abstract Expressionist painters Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman. 

Concerned with colour and texture, nearness and distance as well as reality and mysticism, Jenkins’s work — considered to be part of the second wave of Abstract Expressionism — is a spiritual meditation on the nature of chance, balance, synchronicity, change and transformation. His ejection from an early art class in Kansas City for eating the still life appears instructive: "For me the pear is to be eaten and experienced, not painted.” Jenkins sought to reject the traditional Neo-Platonic approach to art as well as life in favour of a Taoist concern for the “present moment.” In this sense his paintings become spiritual reflections on the transitory present, life merely a rippled dance upon the water’s surface. Jenkins’s death in 2012 and the subsequent release of important works onto the market by his estate increased global interest in his work and they have grown in value and popularity. Jenkins’s works can be found in public and private collections worldwide.

(Biography provided by Stern Pissarro Gallery)

Explore a vast range of abstract prints on 1stDibs to find a piece to enhance your existing collection or transform a space.

Unlike figurative paintings and other figurative art, which focuses on realism and representational perspectives, abstract art concentrates on visual interpretation. An artist may use a single color or simple geometric forms to create a world of depth. Printmaking has a rich history of abstraction. Through materials like stone, metal, wood and wax, an image can be transferred from one surface to another.

During the 19th century, iconic artists, including Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Georgiana Houghton and others, began exploring works based on shapes and colors. This was a departure from the academic conventions of European painting and would influence the rise of 20th-century abstraction and its pioneers, like Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.

Some leaders of European abstraction, including Franz Kline, were influenced by the gestural shapes of East Asian calligraphy. Calligraphy interprets poetry, songs, symbols or other means of storytelling into art, from works on paper in Japan to elements of Islamic architecture.

Bold, daring and expressive, abstract art is constantly evolving and dazzling viewers. And entire genres have blossomed from it, such as Color Field painting and Minimalism.

The collection of abstract art prints on 1stDibs includes etchings, lithographs, screen-prints and other works, and you can find prints by artists such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and more.