1. Robert Oscar Lenkiewicz was one of South West England's most celebrated artists of modern times.
22 Facts About Robert Lenkiewicz
1. 2.
Robert Lenkiewicz did his own thing out in the provinces, which was looked down upon.
3.
Robert Lenkiewicz produced as many as 10,000 works, often on a large scale, and in themed 'projects' investigating hidden communities or difficult social issues.
4.
When Robert Lenkiewicz died in 2002, he left behind a particularly macabre legacy as the embalmed body of one of his friends, a tramp named Diogenes, was found in the cupboard section at the bottom of a bookcase.
5.
Robert Lenkiewicz had promised his friend that he would preserve his body when he died rather than allow him to be buried.
6.
The Robert Lenkiewicz Foundation was established in 1997, received the bequest of the painter's remaining collection of works.
7.
Robert Lenkiewicz was born in London in 1941, the son of refugees who ran a Jewish hotel in Fordwych Road.
8.
Robert Lenkiewicz spent his boyhood in the Hotel Shemtov in Cricklewood, which was run by his parents.
9.
Robert Lenkiewicz's mother was a German baroness and his father a Polish horse breeder who both fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and arrived in London as penniless refugees.
10.
Robert Lenkiewicz frequently stated in interview that the hotel's elderly residents included Holocaust survivors but this is contradicted by the artist's brother John, who recollects that the residents tended to be the parents or grandparents of 2nd or 3rd generation English Jews, though the hotel's Czechoslovakian cook, Mrs Bobek, was a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
11.
Robert Lenkiewicz was inspired to paint after seeing Charles Laughton in Alexander Korda's biographical film Rembrandt.
12.
Robert Lenkiewicz attended Sir Christopher Wren junior technical school of art architecture and building from 1955 to 1958 graduating in art with distinction.
13.
At 16, Robert Lenkiewicz was accepted at Saint Martin's School of Art and later attended the Royal Academy.
14.
Robert Lenkiewicz spent a year living in a remote cottage near Lanreath in Cornwall, supporting his young family by teaching, before being offered studio space on the Barbican in Plymouth by local artist and businessman John Nash.
15.
Robert Lenkiewicz first came to public attention when the media highlighted his giant mural on Plymouth's Barbican in the 1970s.
16.
Robert Lenkiewicz received a major retrospective in 1997 at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, attended by 42,000 visitors.
17.
The rise in Robert Lenkiewicz's popularity was shown in the estate auctions of his personal collection of his own works.
18.
Robert Lenkiewicz was the father of 12 children, some of whom have become artists in their own right.
19.
Robert Lenkiewicz's pupils include Piran Bishop, Yana Travail, Dan Wheatley, Louise Courtnell, Lisa Stokes, Nahem Shoa, James Guy Eccleston and Joe Stoneman.
20.
Robert Lenkiewicz hoped that the exhibition, and the down and outs' own stories, would illuminate the plight of these 'invisible people' and galvanise the community into humane action on their behalf.
21.
Projects such as Mental Handicap, Old Age and Death followed the one on vagrancy as Robert Lenkiewicz continued to examine the lives of ostracised, hidden sections of the community and bring them to the attention of the general public.
22.
Robert Lenkiewicz came to the conclusion that the kinds of sensations people felt when a lover abandoned them or when their cherished beliefs were threatened were identical in kind to the 'withdrawal symptoms' and anxieties experienced by addicts or alcoholics over their preferred narcotic.