At the same time the artist has a solo show at Museo di Pittura in S. Domenico in Prato.

Paul Jenkins was born during a “lightning storm” as he liked to often say. He was born during a storm only to plunge into the great 20th century tempest of informal art. From Europe came the lacerations of war – two wars – with the consequence of its inherent suffering.

Jenkins (1923-2012) became enamored of Italy and ancient painting early on, the enormous heritage of such painting becoming embedded within this young American’s very being. He was keenly drawn to Pompeii and Goya; Vermeer and Bellini, Rembrandt, Velazquez, the ébauches of Moreau. A little more than two years after his passing, the exhibitions dedicated to Jenkins by the Galleria Open Art and the Museo di Pittura Murale in San Domenico, both of Prato, reveal unusual aspects of his early work. Cultivated and well read, shaman and “scientist”, over the years Jenkins has come to be viewed as one of the major figures in twentieth-century art. His meditation in painting is an enduring history of adjacent colors merged together and then perfectly aligned, as though in a single prism.

His continued research into the nature of color, phenomena and movement as well as his interest in the theater, absorbed the abstract expressionism that dominated those years. In Jenkins’ work, color regains name and form, taking on a power that seemed non-existent initially. His thought emerges intact and absolute from the storm; and – spanning New York to Paris and Italy – conveys the rich universe that forged him, from his friendship with Rothko and Pollock to his longstanding relationship with Martha Jackson.

The 70 works on canvas and paper which constitute this exhibition are the result of a profound endeavor to honor a master who over the years in Europe and the US, brought together these two parts of the world through the distinctive and inimitable force of his painting.