Filipp Jenikäe

Filipp Jenikäe was born in 1987. A German artist, he lives and works between Münster and Paris. He came to art through his mother, an art teacher, and grew up in a family that cared about it — his sister studied art history — without ever taking formal academic training in art himself.

He first studied law, then political science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, before going on to study business administration in the Netherlands. It was only later, after having to give up his childhood dream of becoming a professional basketball player, that he turned to art. He was living in Berlin at the time, an environment he describes as particularly stimulating for his explorations.

He paints mainly in acrylic on canvas. One part of the work documents popular culture and the feats of athletes and musicians. The other starts from the social dynamics of the societies he has lived in: landscapes and scenes set in recognisable urban places — clubs, bars, private gardens.

The titles of the canvases are most often place names. "Napoli 1" (90 × 80 cm), "Lisboa" (138 × 130 cm), "Rio de Janeiro" (145 × 101 cm), "Shinjuku Tokyo" (120 × 80 cm), "Cobra Bar Bangkok" (198 × 155 cm) and "Amsterdam Art Nouveau" (90 × 130 cm) each hold an inhabited interior or exterior. Others quote art history and literature directly: "Hokusai Wave", "Gu Hongzong when the night revels", "Tokyo Haruki Murakami". Five works also exist as limited editions, numbered and signed, at 50 × 70 cm.

Among his influences he names Henry Taylor, Jonas Wood, Nina Chanel Abney, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, George Grosz, David Hockney and Faith Ringgold.

He is represented by galleries in Hong Kong, Paris and the United States. Several of his works have gone through auction at Sotheby's (summer 2025), Christie's — "Bar el Coyote", 8 December 2022 — and Phillips. His exhibitions include Collective Dreams in the Urban Experience at Galerie SLP, Berlin (2022), the Kunstauktion at the Münster School of Design (2022), The american dream, deferred at Galerie XV, Paris (2023), an exhibition in Hong Kong (2023), Art Basel Miami (2025) and a solo exhibition in Seoul (2026). Zone Trois Galerie is showing his work in 2026, and two of his canvases in Summer Exhibition II.