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John Ashbery ©1997 R.B. Kitaj |
Ezra Pound II 1974 Color silkscreen Sheet and image: 35.625 x 29.625 inches Edition of 70 Published by Marlborough Graphics ©1974 R.B. Kitaj |
R.B. Kitaj was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932 and as a child attended art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. After high school, he studied art at Cooper Union in New York and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Following two years in Europe serving for the United States Army Kitaj became a student at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University before transferring in 1959 to the Royal College of Art in London. Kitaj remained in Europe, spending 40 of those years in London, until 1997 when he moved to Los Angeles.
Though considered a Pop artist, Kitaj has limited interest in the culture of mass media and instead works from pictorial and literary sources. Renowned for his use of art historical references, Kitaj's work is inspired by late 19th-century French art and his Jewish identity. His painting and prints add up to an extraordinary body of work; his prints functioning as an illustrated journal of an artist's life, characterized by a quest for new subject matter and innovative ways to depict it. Kitaj remains one of the most influential artists since the late 1950s and continues to link personal history with contemporary art through his unique vision.
Kitaj's work is included in numerous public collections including the
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York; British Museum, London, England;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne
Kunst, Oslo; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf,
Germany; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Musée National
d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and the Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid,
Spain; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York,
New York; Tate Modern, London, England; and the Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York, New York.
Recent Exhibition:
R.B. Kitaj
Selected
Prints
March 1-
April 2, 2005
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From the Lives of the Saints 1975 Color silkscreen Sheet: 40 1/2 x 28 inches Edition of 70 Published by Marlborough Graphics ©1975 R.B. Kitaj |