By Paul Jenkins
Located in Detroit, MI
"Phenomena Center Burn" is a beautiful lyrical abstract painting by the creative genius Paul Jenkins, an American Abstract Expressionist painter. If you can image paint flowing like a silk scarf or dancing as a gossamer substance this expresses the visual style of Jenkins’ work.
His work has been aesthetically described by Dr. Louis A. Zona, Director of the Butler Institute of American Art. “The paintings of Paul Jenkins have come to represent the spirit, vitality, and invention of post World War II American abstraction. Employing an unorthodox approach to paint application, Jenkins is as much identified with the process of controlled paint-pouring and canvas manipulation as with the gem-like veils of transparent and translucent color which have characterized his work since the late 1950s. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri in 1923, Jenkins later moved to Youngstown, Ohio. Drawn to New York, he became a student of Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League and ultimately became associated with the Abstract Expressionists, inspired in part by the "cataclysmic challenge of Pollock and the total metaphysical consumption of Mark Tobey." An ongoing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, the study of the I Ching, along with the writings of Carl Gustav Jung prompted Jenkins' turn toward inward reflection and mysticism which have dominated his aesthetic as well as his life.”
Jenkins was born in 1923 in Kansas City, Missouri. In his teenage years, Jenkins moved to Struthers, Ohio to live with his mother, Nadyne Herrick, and stepfather, who both ran the local newspaper, the Hometown Journal (then the Struthers Journal). After graduating from Struthers High School, he served in the U.S. Maritime Service and entered the U.S. Naval Air Corps during World War II. In 1948, he moved to New York City where, on the G.I. Bill, he studied at the Art Students League of New York with Yasuo Kuniyoshi for four years, and with Morris Kantor. During that time, he met Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Barnett Newman. In 1953, he traveled to Europe, working for three months in Taormina in Sicily before settling in Paris, France. From 1955 on, the artist shared his time between New York and Paris.
It was in Paris where his first solo exhibition took place in 1954 at Studio Paul Facchetti on the rue de Lille. Paul Facchetti, with the help of Alfonso Ossorio, held in 1952, an exhibition of the work of Jackson Pollock in his gallery, which was well known for showing works by abstract artists of the time, among others.
Jenkins' first solo exhibition in the US took place in 1954 at the pioneering gallery of Zoe Dusanne...
Category
1960s Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins Paintings
