The Xtra Diary - Robert Lenkiewicz's Study of Bianca back in frame
Published: 30 April, 2010
A PAINTER Diary has long admired, Robert Lenkiewicz, still makes the tabloids although he died eight years ago.
Now, one of his models, Bianca, is making headlines because she has become engaged to Earl Spencer.
Bianca is used to titles, at one time she was Lady Bianca Eliot, wife of Lord Jago Eliot.
The marriage ended tragically when she came home to discover her husband dead in the bath after an epileptic seizure.
Bianca, whom Diary met at a West End exhibition of Lenkiewicz’s works a year ago, was the daughter of one of the painter’s friends, Karen Ciambriello.
Her husband Joseph also died in dramatic circumstances. The jack gave way when he was under a vintage Alfa Romeo.
Lenkiewicz was said to have had 12 women friends and 11 children. Karen lived with him in Plymouth for many years before his death in 2002.
He grew up in West Hampstead, where his parents ran a small hotel in the post-war years, before settling in Plymouth, and soon became acknowledged as one of Britain’s most imaginative painters.
His canvases showing an obsession with death and women.
But he also painted people many painters often don’t want to touch, including tramps, prostitutes and those with disabilities.
After finishing at
St Martin’s art school, Lenkiewicz quickly established a reputation as a promising painter and was a friend of Francis Bacon.
But the artist soon tired of the fashionable scene in the capital.
If there’s one thing Lenkiewicz wasn’t it was a conformist.
An astonishing draughtsman, he started off with heavy portraits in oil and was sometimes compared with Rembrandt.
Throughout his many liaisons his women friends seemed to get on with each other and often they could be seen at shows of his work.
They even still keep in contact with each other, Diary hears. It is difficult not to wonder if some of his women friends may bump into each other as guests at the big wedding!