Paul Jenkins, painter and informal writer of the 20th centuries, produced a work close to lyrical abstraction and abstract expressionism.

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After the Second War, Jenkins moved to Pittsburg (Kansas), where he joined a group of artists and writers supported by American philanthropist Gladys Schmidt, who allowed them to exhibit at the Outline Gallery, a major center of American avant-garde art. In 1953, Jenkins moved to Paris, where he met Jean Dubuffet, Georges Matthieu, Pierre Soulages and Sam Francis. In 1955, he participated in the historical exhibition Foreign artists in France organized by the Petit Palais in Paris.

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His work is based on research on spiritual transcendence and on the definition of objective art. The colors he uses, of remarkable intensity, are combined with lines designed to channel creative forces and impose discipline on them.

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“Color is a sensation and not an external manifestation of nature. Color is not a simple thing (...) it must have meaning.”

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From the first retrospective devoted to him in 1971 by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, to that of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille in 2005, his work has now acquired international renown.