Paul Jenkins AMERICAN, 1923-2012

Paul Jenkins occupies a distinctive position within post-war American abstraction. Renowned for his luminous, flowing paintings of colour and light, Jenkins developed a highly individual visual language that sought to capture not the appearance of the world, but its underlying energies, rhythms, and spiritual dimensions. Throughout a career spanning more than six decades, he produced a body of work that bridged Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field painting, and Eastern philosophical thought, establishing himself as one of the most poetic and innovative painters of his generation.

 

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1923, Jenkins developed an early fascination with Asian art through the collections of the Nelson Gallery, an influence that would remain central to his practice throughout his life. Following service in the Second World War, he moved to New York in 1948 to study at the Art Students League under the G.I. Bill, where he studied with the Japanese-American painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Through Kuniyoshi, Jenkins deepened his engagement with East Asian aesthetics and philosophy, particularly the notion that art should seek to reveal the essential nature of experience rather than merely reproduce its outward appearance.

 

After initially working in ink and watercolour, Jenkins relocated to Paris in 1953, where he developed the artistic language for which he would become internationally recognised. Dissatisfied with conventional approaches to painting, he sought a means of expression capable of communicating the emotional, spiritual, and phenomenological experiences that lay beyond representation. The result was a highly personal practice centred on the movement of liquid colour across the picture plane, producing compositions that appear simultaneously spontaneous and profoundly controlled.

 

Jenkins titled many of his paintings Phenomenon, a term that reflects his enduring interest in perception, memory, and the transient nature of human experience. While his works remain resolutely abstract, they frequently evoke natural forces and atmospheric conditions: clouds of smoke, flowing water, shifting light, geological formations, or wings suspended in flight. Their apparent immateriality conceals a sophisticated understanding of colour relationships, transparency, and spatial perception.

 

A crucial influence on Jenkins's mature practice was his early study of ceramic glazing techniques, which informed his exceptional sensitivity to the behaviour of liquid pigment. By the 1960s, he had developed his characteristic method of pouring highly diluted acrylic paint onto prepared canvases and guiding its movement using an ivory knife or brush. Rather than imposing form upon the material, Jenkins worked collaboratively with the physical properties of paint itself, allowing gravity, viscosity, and movement to become active participants in the creative process.

 

Jenkins's longstanding engagement with Asian culture and philosophy was further deepened through his encounter with the avant-garde Japanese Gutai movement in Paris in 1957 and his subsequent invitation to work with the group in Osaka in 1964. This experience reinforced his commitment to process, gesture, and the relationship between artistic action and material transformation. The same year, he married the artist Alice Baber, with whom he shared a profound interest in colour, light, travel, and collecting.

 

Although often associated with Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, Jenkins occupied a unique position within post-war art, synthesising Western abstraction with Eastern philosophical traditions to create works that resist easy categorisation. His paintings are not simply images but experiences: meditations on perception, energy, and the interconnectedness of the natural and spiritual worlds.

 

Today, Paul Jenkins is recognised as one of the leading figures of post-war American abstraction. His works are held in major public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Through their extraordinary luminosity and emotional resonance, Jenkins's paintings continue to invite viewers into a space of contemplation, sensation, and wonder.