The 38 self-portraits collected in this book span the artist’s whole career. From his first paintings as an earnest fifteen-year-old boy, working in Room No. 3 of the Hotel Shemtov, the Jewish hotel run by his parents in
Cricklewood in the post-war years, to the haunting last self-portrait in hospital shortly before his death in Plymouth aged sixty, these images make
for an encyclopaedia of the artist’s changing styles and philosophical interests down the years.
‘Skill is a faculty that is half-asleep,’ said Lenkiewicz, yet his self-portraits transcend mere technique and confront the spectator with the fully alert and unflinching gaze of an artist profoundly interested in ‘the business of living’.
This book formed the catalogue to the exhibition Robert Lenkiewicz: Self-Portraits 1956-2002 at the Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art in 2008. |
