Robert Lentz

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Robert Lentz

Born 1946
Colorado
Nationality USA
Field iconography

Br. Robert Lentz, OFM (born 1946, in Colorado, United States)[1][2] is a religious icon painter. He comes from a Russian Orthodox background[3] and is now a Franciscan friar who serves in the Byzantine Rite.[2][1] He currently serves at All Saints Church in Houston, Texas. In addition to his painting and clerical work, he writes and teaches on art and spirituality across the country.

He was born in rural Colorado of a family of Russian descent. He served as an apprentice painter to a master of Greek icon painting from the school of Photios Kontoglou at Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts.[2][1]His icons include 14 large images of recently canonized saints, people of various cultures and ethnicities, and modern (nonreligious) political and cultural figures.[3][4]

Lentz and his student, Father William Hart McNichols, are both gay,[5] and Lentz was forced to leave a monastery because of it, even though he was celibate.[6] Lentz's painting of Saints Sergius and Bacchus depicts the pair as a gay couple. Toby Johnson hails Lentz's icon of Harvey Milk as "a national gay treasure".[4]

Addison H. Hart has criticised Lentz and McNichols's works as propaganda "to serve their own religious sociopolitical agenda".[7]

[edit] Bibliography

  • A Passion for Life: Fragments of the Face of God, by Joan D. Chittister and Robert Lentz, 1996, Orbis Books, 132 pages, ISBN 978-1570750762
  • Christ in the Margins, by Robert Lentz and Edwina Gately, 2003, Orbis Books, 144 pages, ISBN 978-1570753213

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Brother Robert Lentz, ofm at Trinity Stores, retrieved 1 November 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Julian of Norwich, Icon by Robert Lentz, retrieved 1 November 2007.
  3. ^ a b An Exhibition of Contemporary Religious Art by Robert Lentz, Marian Library, retrieved 1 November 2007.
  4. ^ a b Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More By Kittredge Cherry, reviewed by Toby Johnson, retrieved 1 November 2007.
  5. ^ The dangerous lives of gay priests: fearing a witch-hunt in the wake of the sex abuse scandal, gay Roman Catholic priests talk of their dedication to their work and their God—and of the secret loves that put their careers at risk, page 6, by Mubarak Dahir, The Advocate, July 23, 2002 retrieved 1 November 2007.
  6. ^ Henri Nouwen's Wounded Heart, by Maura Hanrahan, TheSocialEdge.com, March 27, 2006, retrieved 1 November 2007.
  7. ^ review: God’s Word in Color:The Mystical Language of Icons by Solrunn Nes, reviewed by Addison H. Hart, Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, retrieved 1 November 2007.


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