Painter, born Ronald Brooks Kitaj in Cleveland, Ohio, of Russian-Jewish and Viennese descent. He signed on as a merchant seaman in the USA, making several voyages to the Caribbean and South America, before receiving formal art training at the Cooper Union, New York. He also studied in Vienna at the Akademie der bildenden Künste and travelled extensively in Europe. Following service in the US Army, 1956-57, he continued his art education in England, on a GI grant, first at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, and then at the RCA, 1960-62. His peers included David Hockney, Allen Jones, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips all of whom including Kitaj had a significant influence on British Pop Art.
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His breadth of experience made him an influence on his fellow artists and though his work least deserves the label 'pop', he acted as a catalyst on a number of artists associated with that movement. His personal brand of figurative art smashed all stylistic conventions. In 1962, he met the screenprinter Chris Prater and embarked on a long involvement with collage print. In 1963, he held his first solo exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and his first British solo at Marlborough Fine Art, London. He was responsible for the virtual School of London, a phrase that Kitaj coined in his catalogue introduction to the exhibition titled "The Human Clay" at the Hayward Gallery in 1976.
Having taught at various London art schools including Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts and the Slade School, he accepted a Guest Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, 1967-68. After the death of his first wife, he married the American painter, Sandra Fisher. His work during the 1980’s showed a heightened obsession with Jewish history and individuality. In 1981, a major retrospective of his work was held in Washington, Cleveland and Dusseldorf, Germany. He was elected an Associate of the RA in 1984 and a full member in 1990, the first American to be so honoured since John Singer Sargent at the end of the 19th century. His Tate Gallery Retrospective of 1994 was lambasted by the London art critics and Kitaj blamed them for the death soon after of his wife Sandra and he decided to leave London for California spending the last decade of his life in Los Angeles. Soon after he was awarded the Golden Lion for painting at the Venice Biennale of 1995. The vast majority of his later output depicted images of himself and his late wife Sandra. In 2000, Kitaj presented an exhibition of 100 works at Marlborough, New York, under the title 'How to Reach 67 in Jewish Art'. His work was last exhibited in London at a solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art in November 2006. Examples of his work are in collections both public and private around the UK such as Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Museums Sheffield, University of Warwick Art Collection and in America and elsewhere. In Scotland, he is represented in the collection of Dundee University and at the Ben Uri in London.
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