R. B. Kitaj

R. B. Kitaj (1932-2007), American painter and draughtsman, who was active mainly in Britain, and who is known for his figurative representations of the human body.

R. B. Kitaj was born on October 27, 1932, in Cleveland, Ohio, and spent part of his boyhood and adolescence in Troy, New York State. From 1949 to 1954 he studied at Cooper Union in New York and at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, between trips to Central and South America as a merchant seaman. After serving in the United States Army, Kitaj travelled to England and studied at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, and at the Royal College of Art in London.

Kitaj’s travels as a young man and his eventual settling in Britain as an expatriate kept him out of direct involvement with any particular school or movement. He had little taste for American Abstract Expressionism, and was repelled by attempts to associate his work with that of the British Pop Artists, in spite of his interest in, and use of, images from popular culture (magazines and films). Kitaj cited Post-Impressionism as one of the most important influences on his style, especially the work of Degas and Cézanne. Kitaj’s pastels often include a soft blurring of shapes and sinuous lines, as in Bather (Psychotic Boy) (1980, collection of H. R. Astrup, Oslo), and large flat patches of colour often structure the compositions of his paintings, as in The Room (Rue St Denis) (1982-1983, private collection). At the same time, a Surrealist strangeness and anxiety permeate his work. Jarring spatial juxtapositions, sexual tension, and the combination of radically different techniques in one composition contribute to this anxious mood.

Kitaj’s keen interest in literature, and his long-lasting friendships with poets and writers, as well as his passionate investigations of his own Jewish heritage, are reflected in his work. In many of his later paintings, Kitaj created fictional characters who—like the Jew Joe Singer in The Listener (Joe Singer in Hiding) (1980, collection of Nelson Blitz Jr., New York)—are both universal archetypes and disguised self-portraits.

Kitaj was elected to the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1985. In 1994 a major retrospective of his works was held at the Tate Gallery in London, and a year later he received a special award at the Venice Biennale; another solo exhibition of his paintings took place in 1998 at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo. The Tate retrospective led to unexpectedly harsh criticism, which resulted in much bitterness, particularly as Kitaj believed that the distress caused was responsible for the sudden and premature death of his second wife, Sandra. Much of his subsequent output contained images of Sandra. In 1997 he left London for the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where he died on October 21, 2007.