Paul Jenkins studied at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1938 to 1941, and then continued his training at Struthers in Ohio, before working as an apprentice in a ceramics factory. He was called up and fought in the American army from 1944 to 1946. After his demobilization, he became a pupil of Morris Kantor and Yasuho Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League in New York from 1948 to 1951. He travelled to Sicily and Spain. It was during this time that he first met Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning, aligning himself directly with the nascent Abstract Expressionist group. However, Jenkin’s inspirations were a great deal more global. He had a deep interest in Chinese painting and immersed himself in the European avant-garde, even relocating to Paris for a period in the 1950s.

His earliest works, in the Abstract-Expressionist idiom, had names from Hermann Melville, such as To Queequeg of 1957, evoking the fury of the elements in a vast movement of thickly applied paints of Captain Ahab’s blind search for the absolute. He then developed a more serene version of Tachism in paintings he often called Phenomena, which are characterized by delicate washes of vibrant colors set against plain white backgrounds. He himself commented: ‘What is left in silence completes the expression and makes the unknown visible and perceptible.’ His first solo exhibition in America was at the Marth Jackson Gallery (New York) in 1956.

Though he remained faithful to the title Phenomena, the appearance of his work continued to evolve, coming closer to that of the American painters Mark Rothko, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, for whom color was becoming the dominant means of expression. During the 1980s, Jenkins more of less abandoned the flow technique in order to have greater control over the structure of his paintings.

His first full retrospective was at the Kestner-Gesellschaft of Hanover, Germany. The Tate Gallery (London), MOMA (New York) and Musée d'art modern (Paris) are amongst the large number of public collections holding his work.