Paul Jenkins - © Suzanne Jenkins 1990

Paul Jenkins – © Suzanne Jenkins 1990

 

 

Le peintre américain Paul Jenkins est considéré aujourd’hui comme l’un des grands maîtres de l’abstraction expressionniste. Chez Jenkins, les couleurs prennent du relief, par leurs combinaisons, elles tourbillonnent, fluctuent, se séparent, et vibrent par leur grande luminosité.Il est considéré aujourd’hui comme l’un des plus grands artistes américains contemporains.
Né en 1923, Paul Jenkins, explique ainsi sa démarche :  » Deux sortes de lumière m’ont toujours attirées, celle de Georges de la Tour qui semble irradier de la toile, et la lumière réfléchie née de l’imagination de Turner. A partir de ces deux sources, réflexion et radiation, j’ai essayé de réaliser une sorte de forme dans son propre espace, avec une certaine lumière qui vient de l’intérieur, alors que l’élément réfléchi, lui vient de l’extérieur « .
Encore assez peu connu en France, Paul Jenkins est exposé dans les plus grands musées du monde. Il a des oeuvres Musée d’Art Moderne de Tokyo, à la Tate Galery de Londres, au Museum of Modern Art de New York, ou encore au Centre Georges Pompidou à Paris.

 

 

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’ fame 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 1950’s. 
Paul Jenkins was born in 1923 (Missouri) and died in New York in 2012. 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 Jung prompted Jenkins’ turn toward inward reflection and mysticism which have dominated his aesthetic as well as his life. Close to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko during his student years, he moved in 1953 to Paris, where he meet Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Pierre Restany, San Francis.
Through his paintings entitled «Phenomena,» bright waves and  thick and dense layers of paint saturate the eyes with color. Opacity and transparency merge on the canvas to develop the image and almagamate the color. Paul Jenkins works are present in the greatest museums. He also produced monumental sets for the Paris Opera and presented a dance and song performance in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Because he was associated with the greatest names of post-war art, as Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, who left him in 1963 his studio in Broadway, an extraordinary loft Jenkins held until in 2000, it was sometimes classified as abstract expressionists.

 

 

 

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Oeuvres disponibles / Available Works