Lenkiewicz’s imagination and energy seem to be inexhaustible, concocting endless amazing hybrids such as iconic Renaissance paintings invaded by characters from nineteenth-century Japanese woodblocks, French Revolutionary masterpieces spliced with German Romanticism, or Cubism infiltrated by Victorian children’s illustration. His striking paintings and drawings mine the hallowed halls of art history and popular culture in search of visual languages, imagery, themes and motifs that he can appropriate, adapt, use and abuse, bringing together different movements, genres, periods and styles in dialogues that are surprising, innovative and sometimes provocative. In 2018 an individual exhibition of von Lenkiewicz’s work was held at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre in Moscow, Russia.This is the first major monograph on the work of one of Britain’s most dynamic artists, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz.

In his work, he combines seemingly different forms of aesthetics – in addition to his interest in iconic works of art history, he is also interested in images from popular culture and Far Eastern cultures – thereby creating something entirely new. He opens our eyes to the dynamic development of art through the ages and to how various styles and perspectives overlap and intermingle.

His paintings attempt to overcome the tendency to categorise or assign works of art to specific styles or isms. He combines a high level of artistry with the possibilities offered by image manipulation tools of the twenty-first century. Von Lenkiewicz is known for his artistic reconfigurations of iconic images from art history – from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” to Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica.” Lenkiewicz challenges the concept of authorship by mixing various concepts of aesthetics. Consequently, his art is characterised by references to philosophy. In 1990, von Lenkiewicz graduated from the faculty of philosophy at York University, where he focused on epistemology. He was born in England, the son of the British painter Robert Lenkiewicz and the great-grandson of Baron von Schlossberg, a court painter for the King of Bavaria, Ludwig II, also known as the Fairy Tale King or Mad King Ludwig.

Wolfe von Lenkiewicz has German-Polish-Jewish roots.

Wolfe von Lenkiewicz by Richard Dyer