Robert Lenkiewicz

Pictures by one of Britain's most eccentric artists are being auctioned in a last-ditch attempt to set up a museum for the rest of his work.

Robert Lenkiewicz, who died last year, is the man who embalmed a tramp long before Damien Hirst even thought of pickling a shark. He was also a prolific painter. But, unlike Hirst, he's never been taken seriously by the artistic establishment.

Our Culture Correspondent, Madeleine Holt, talked to people who think it's time he was.

MADELINE HOLT:
It's not easy dancing to Mahler. Perhaps only gentlemen of the road can do him justice. But then try painting the scene, the morning after.

DAVID LEE:
Art Critic
It's a very ambitious picture, extremely ambitious. How many painters can you think of now who would be capable of painting convincingly in an interior, with so many figures as this? Only Lucien Freud springs to mind. It is beautifully painted too. I've always considered Robert Lenkiewicz to be one of the most interesting of contemporary figurative artists, he was capable of painting incredibly well and incredibly badly, like all painters. I think it's a great indictment of the contemporary art scene that none of Robert's pictures is in a national or regional collection.

MADELINE HOLT:
You will find many a saucy, schmaltzy print by Robert Lenkiewicz in sitting rooms all over the South West. Their appeal allowed him to indulge his love of women. His mostly conventional artistic style, honed at the Royal Academy, supported a highly unconventional lifestyle in the town he made his home, Plymouth.

He had 11 children from seven partners, and, he claimed, at least 3,000 sexual encounters. He had to keep the wolf from the door somehow.

This cafe, round the corner from his studio on Plymouth's Barbican, kept him in cheeseburgers for years in return for a mural at the back of the shop.

JOHN TEDESCO:
Prete's Café
When we unveiled it and you looked at it, and didn't believe then that it was the Last Supper, he had to explain it to us, over a period of time. At that time, being a very busy holiday tourist sort of area, people came in, didn't like it, I would say 99% of people didn't like it, they often commented about no one smiling.

MADELINE HOLT:
What do you think of his pictures?

JOYCE TEDESCO:
Some of them I like, some of them I don't.

MARGARET KNOTMAN:
I don't like the crudey, rudey ones of disabled people making love and things like that, no, not my cup of tea.

JOYCE TEDESCO:
They are years old now, aren't they?

JOHN TEDESCO:
One of his first projects if I remember, was possibly to do with vagrants, I think he called them. What he tried to do then was bring all his vagrants into here, and mix vagrants with holiday makers and tourists, it didn't work.

MADELINE HOLT:
It was one of his vagrants who was to bring Robert Lenkiewicz brief, but national fame. He persuaded his great friend, nicknamed Diogenes, to let him embalm his dead body. Then Lenkiewicz hid it.

ROBERT LENKIEWICZ:
1985
Although this appears to be rather eccentric and unusual and some humour has been introduced into the issue, it is in fact perfectly serious from a humanist and philosophical point of view. One is always strangely compelled by the total presence of the body running parallel with the complete absence of the person. I don't know if you have witnessed it, but if you see that, and I have many, many times, you will see that there is an interesting association and cross reference with witnessing birth. A very strange, haunting atmosphere, and I just wanted to become more familiar with that. It is entirely personal.

MADELINE HOLT:
But his reputation as a publicity hungry provincial was secure. It didn't stop Lenkiewicz carrying on making hundreds of pictures on one serious social issue after another, almost always painting the people he lived amongst.

All his life, he was drawn to the underprivileged. His family were Polish- Jewish refugees. He grew up surrounded by Holocaust survivors who'd ended up at his parents' London hotel. He ended up, in the early '70s, giving shelter to up to 170 tramps a night in empty warehouses in Plymouth.

MICHAEL FOOT:
He was really deeply affected by some of the horrors that were happening round the world and how they should be stopped and the rest. He was aware of all these things, no doubt they also contributed to his being such a great painter. He like the other great painters of the world, of course they understood what was happening in the world, they weren't trying to cut themselves off

MADELINE HOLT:
As a Plymouth man, Michael Foot knew Lenkiewicz well. The artist was painting him only months before he died.

His studio has been left how it was. There are hundreds of pictures, he was so prolific and possessive of his work. Another a 150 go on sale at Sotheby's in London tomorrow to pay off debts of £1 million.

ANNIE HILL-SMITH:
Chair, Lenkiewicz Foundation
It's a tragedy that we didn't get more help more quickly. If we had, maybe the necessity for this sale wouldn't exist.

MADELINE HOLT:
His supporters have so far failed to get European or Lottery money to set up a study centre in Plymouth for the rest of his work and for his extraordinary collection of books on philosophy and fanaticism. Valued at more than £4 million, Lenkiewicz cherished his library, and would trade his pictures for the rarest editions.

ROBERT LENKIEWICZ:
2001
It is a fantasy of mine that this corner of the Barbican should be known in years to come as an enquiry centre for the history of fanaticism. The primary benefit is that young people would be able to have access to a very solid and important library.

ANNIE HILL-SMITH:
Plymouth is a place where there are not a huge number of high cultural assets. I think Robert is a very unusual high cultural asset. I think his work is very accessible and very dynamic. I think this could make a real difference to the cultural life of Plymouth.

MADELINE HOLT:
If lottery money were dependent on grassroots appeal, Lenkiewicz would win hands down. In the 30 years that Robert Lenkiewicz worked here, anyone could just come off the street and look at his pictures, or watch him paint.

In the last week, the paintings due to be auctioned in London went on show here in the South West for the last time and a thousand people a day have come to see them. Although Lenkiewicz would have understandably shuddered at the phrase the People's Painter, in many ways by the end of his life that's what he had become.

But that has cut no ice with those who hand out the people's money. Friends of Lenkiewicz believe what he needs now is artistic and intellectual credibility.

One believer is David Lee, a critic known for his dislike of much conceptual art, and his love of painting.

DAVID LEE:
He was not taken seriously because he was a figurative painter in a traditional, conventional style at a time when an artist who switched a light on and off won a major national award. Not a single major national or regional art collection has ever given him a full retrospective so that we can see his best work and gauge it for what it is. Maybe he is not as good as I think he is if we saw all the best works together, but we have never been given that chance.

MADELINE HOLT:
Unless you went to the preview of tomorrows sale, it was in effect the first major Lenkiewicz show in London. Also this week, his portrait of Michael Foot was hung at Westminster, establishment approval at last? Not if Michael Foot has anything to do with it.

MICHAEL FOOT:
Too good for the House of Commons I tell you, too good for the House of Commons, it has got to come back to Plymouth at some stage.

MADELINE HOLT:
That depends on perceptions of Lenkiewicz and whether the grant givers think Plymouth deserves to make something of his legacy. They'll need to open their eyes and their minds.

More information about Robert Lenkiewicz is available from the Lenkiewicz Foundation - 01752 668266. Sotheby's sale of works by Robert Lenkiewicz is at Olympia, London from 2pm, 18 September 2003 (telephone number: 0207 293 6491).

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.