Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art

R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007) Spirit of the Ghetto Original seven color silkscreen on paper Signature: Hand signed by the artist in pencil lower right Edition: From the small, limited edition of 25, pencil numbered lower right 2/25 Sight Size: 23-1/2" x 17-1/2" Frame Size: 27" x 21.5" In Tate collection, London. Ronald Brooks Kitaj RA 1932 – 2007 was an American artist with Jewish roots who spent much of his life in England. He became a merchant seaman with a Norwegian freighter when he was 17. He studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna and the Cooper Union in New York City. After serving in the United States Army for two years, in France and Germany, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford (1958–59) under the G.I. Bill, where he developed a love of Cézanne, and then at the Royal College of Art in London (1959–61), alongside David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Peter Phillips, Allen Jones and Patrick Caulfield. Richard Wollheim, the philosopher and David Hockney remained lifelong friends. "Through an earlier pre-occupation with turn-of-the-century intellectual life in Vienna (where he had started his art studies in the early 1950s), as well as an admiration for the Warburg Institute approach to the history of art-in-its-intellectual-context (since after Vienna he had moved to Oxford to study with the art historian Edgar Wind, before going on to the Royal College of Art) Kitaj has come to identify most strongly with the central European Jewish writer Franz Kafka, and with his sense of estrangement and of hidden mysteries. Illustrations to Kafka's aphorisms, imaginary portraits of his fiancée Felice and Count West-West who owned The Castle, appear in the Little Pictures, as do rapidly sketched portraits of Karl Kraus, Paul Celan, Leon Trotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein, representations of Judeo-Christian mysteries of the hidden face of God. Kitaj settled in England, and through the 1960s taught at the Ealing Art College, the Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art. He also taught at the University of California, Berkeley in 1968. He staged his first solo exhibition at Marlborough New London Gallery in London in 1963, entitled "Pictures with commentary, Pictures without commentary", in which text included in the pictures and the accompanying catalogue referred to a range of literature and history, citing Aby Warburg's analysis of symbolic forms as a major influence. He curated an exhibition for the Arts Council at the Hayward Gallery in 1976, entitled "The Human Clay" (an allusion to a line by W. H. Auden), including works by 48 London artists, such as William Roberts, Richard Carline, Colin Self and Maggi Hambling, championing the cause of figurative art at a time when abstract was dominant. In an essay in the controversial catalogue, he invented the phrase the School of London to describe painters such as Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Euan Uglow, Michael...

• Ronald Brooks Kitaj (American, 1932 – 2007) Portrait of the film director John Ford Crayon on paper 13.7/8 x 10.7/8 in. (38 x 28 cm.) Provenance: Cyril C. Pain, Church Street, Lond...

Etching and aquatint: sheet diameter, circa 45.5 cm Edition of 175, signed and numbered Published in January 1984 by The Arion Press, San Francisco From the portfolio; "Self-portr...

An erotic dalliance between a nude blonde woman lying down, and nude man, on a bed with white sheets. Subtle shades of peach, tan, yellow, and grey and black shadow behind the couple. Kitaj's elegant drawing tempers this shocking scene. Edgy addition to a contemporary, minimalist, or modern bedroom or living space. Paper 29 x 20.5 in. / 74.2 x 52.7 cm Lithograph on RK Burt white mould-made paper. Edition of 50: this impression 10/50. Signed by the artist and numbered 10/50 lower right in pencil. While the title states that "Some do not", some do -- and here, two lovers heighten their intimacy with a taboo sexual act...

A colorful erotic daydream drawing of a nude blonde fantasizing, with a redhead woman, and man. Green and purple patterns on hair and pillows, and art deco motifs, adorn this sensual...

Paper 36.5 x 23.5 in. / 92.7 x 59.7 cm. Original exhibition poster for R.B. Kitaj at La Fabbrica, Milan. Signed by the artist lower center in pencil. This poster is reproduced fro...

Printed in a rich terra cotta red on pale pink paper, Orgasm depicts a woman’s head in profile with a dark background. Kitaj was fascinated with the female form, often producing edgy...

Swimming Poster: Published and printed in Germany by Olympia Edition. signed in the plate this is not mounted to linen or backed. has never been framed. It depicts an African (African American?) Olympic Swimmer...

Ronald Brooks Kitaj RA 1932 – 2007 was an American artist with Jewish roots who spent much of his life in England. He became a merchant seaman with a Norwegian freighter when he was 17. He studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna and the Cooper Union in New York City. After serving in the United States Army for two years, in France and Germany, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford (1958–59) under the G.I. Bill, where he developed a love of Cézanne, and then at the Royal College of Art in London (1959–61), alongside David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Peter Phillips, Allen Jones and Patrick Caulfield. Richard Wollheim, the philosopher and David Hockney remained lifelong friends. "Through an earlier pre-occupation with turn-of-the-century intellectual life in Vienna (where he had started his art studies in the early 1950s), as well as an admiration for the Warburg Institute approach to the history of art-in-its-intellectual-context (since after Vienna he had moved to Oxford to study with the art historian Edgar Wind, before going on to the Royal College of Art) Kitaj has come to identify most strongly with the central European Jewish writer Franz Kafka, and with his sense of estrangement and of hidden mysteries. Illustrations to Kafka's aphorisms, imaginary portraits of his fiancée Felice and Count West-West who owned The Castle, appear in the Little Pictures, as do rapidly sketched portraits of Karl Kraus, Paul Celan, Leon Trotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein, representations of Judeo-Christian mysteries of the hidden face of God. Kitaj settled in England, and through the 1960s taught at the Ealing Art College, the Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art. He also taught at the University of California, Berkeley in 1968. He staged his first solo exhibition at Marlborough New London Gallery in London in 1963, entitled "Pictures with commentary, Pictures without commentary", in which text included in the pictures and the accompanying catalogue referred to a range of literature and history, citing Aby Warburg's analysis of symbolic forms as a major influence. He curated an exhibition for the Arts Council at the Hayward Gallery in 1976, entitled "The Human Clay" (an allusion to a line by W. H. Auden), including works by 48 London artists, such as William Roberts, Richard Carline, Colin Self and Maggi Hambling, championing the cause of figurative art at a time when abstract was dominant. In an essay in the controversial catalogue, he invented the phrase the School of London to describe painters such as Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Euan Uglow, Michael...

Artist: R.B. Kitaj, American (1932 - 2007) Title: Performing Arts Center from New York, New York Portfolio Year: 1983 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 51/250...

Initialled signed in pencil From R. B. Kitaj, In Our Time: Covers for a Small Library After the Life for the Most Part, screenprint 1969 edition of 150 photo screenprint. A cover of the infamous Henry Ford book from the Dearborn Independent "The Jewish Question". Printed by Kelpra Studio, London, published by Marlborough AG, Schellenberg, Florida. The Jewish Museum. a cover related to Russian Soviet cinema and film. Stylistically, these are hybrid works, influenced by Pop art and the modernist tradition of the Readymade, a work of art created when a mundane found object is named as an artwork and set in an art context. This avant-garde concept was originally invented by the Dada master Marcel Duchamp early in the twentieth century. In the 1960s it received renewed attention at a time when artistic norms were again being questioned. Reacting to Andy Warhol’s Pop imagery, Kitaj poignantly called his repurposed book covers “his soup can, his Liz Taylor.” The blatant use of images taken directly from commercial sources situates In Our Time as a precursor of appropriation art. In turning book covers into works of art, Kitaj is offering fragments of a history of knowledge, in which the content of each volume is at once mysterious and absent. Coming from this passionate bibliophile, the series is nothing less than an intellectual self-portrait. R.B. Kitaj, in full Ronald Brooks Kitaj . Ron Kitaj...

A Spanish Civil War book cover. Initialled signed in pencil From R. B. Kitaj, In Our Time: Covers for a Small Library After the Life for the Most Part, screenprint 1969 edition of 15...