Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
American, 1932-2007
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932, R.B. (Ronald Brooks) Kitaj is considered a key figure in European and American contemporary painting. While his work has been considered controversial, he is regarded as a master draftsman with a commitment to figurative art. His highly personal paintings and drawings reflect his deep interest in history; cultural, social and political ideologies; and issues of identity.
Among his various honors are election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982, and election to the Royal Academy in 1985 (the first American since John Singer Sargent to receive this honor.)
Numerous retrospective exhibitions of his work include shows at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; The Jewish Museum, Berlin; The Jewish Museum, London; and the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany.
Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and Troy, New York, Kitaj joined the Merchant Marines in 1949.
In 1950, between sailings, he attended classes at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. He went on to study drawing at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, Austria.
Kitaj moved to Oxford, England in 1957, and enrolled at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford.
In 1959, Kitaj was accepted into Royal College of Art, London, where he befriended classmate David Hockney. Upon graduation from the RCA, Kitaj signed with Marlborough Fine Art, London, where he had his first solo exhibition in 1963. His art career began in earnest, and he found critical acclaim alongside commercial success.
A second solo show followed at Marlborough Gallery, New York, in 1965, and he sold “The Ohio Gang” to The Museum of Modern Art.
In 1969, Kitaj taught for a year at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1976, he coined the term “School of London” in an essay he wrote as curator of the polemical exhibition, “The Human Clay,” at the Hayward Gallery, London. The term, though loose, continues to define a group of stylistically diverse artists, including Kitaj, who were working in London at that time focusing on figural representation.
In 1981, he spent a year in Paris, France, where he focused on drawing and use of pastel.
In 1994, the Tate Gallery, London, organized a major retrospective of Kitaj’s work. Hostile and personal attacks from some critics led to what Kitaj referred to as the “Tate War.” The exhibition subsequently traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Kitaj moved to Los Angeles, California, and continued to exhibit with Marlborough Fine Art and the Marlborough Gallery, New York.
In 2001 the National Gallery London organized a solo exhibition of paintings: “R.B. Kitaj In the Aura of Cezanne and Other Masters.” Kitaj focused on his “late style” in his Yellow Studio in Westwood and died in 2007.
His gift of his archive to the UCLA Library Special Collections was celebrated with exhibitions at the Skirball Cultural Center and UCLA’s Young Research Library.(Biography provided by Rosenbaum Contemporary)
to
1
23
3
3
19
7
1
5
10
8
2
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
9
3
1
1
13
10
7
5
4
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
26
7
10
2
2
27
6,827
3,109
2,517
1,217
15
8
1
1
1
Artist: Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Swimmer - Screenprint (Olympic Games Munich 1972)
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Paris, FR
Ronard Brooks KITAJ
Swimmer
Screen print
Signature printed in the plate
On heavy paper 101 x 64 cm (c. 40 x 26 inch)
Made for the Olympic Games in Munich, 1972
Excellent condition
Category
1970s American Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
R.B. Kitaj "The Jerwish Question"
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
R.B. Kitaj Orgasm: drawing of woman in ecstasy with pale pink and clay red
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
Late 20th Century Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
POGANY rare 17 color 1960s British Pop silkscreen signed numbered edition of 70
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
R.B. Kitaj
POGANY, 1966
17 colour Screenprint and Photo-screenprint
24 × 36 inches
Pencil signed and numbered from the Limited Edition of 70
Hand-signed by artist, Signed & numbered ...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen, Pencil
A Rash Act: erotic drawing of nude blonde, redhead, and man with art deco motifs
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
Some do not (A) R.B. Kitaj erotic nude drawing of nude blonde with man on bed
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
BAGHDAD
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
Ronald Brooks (R.B.) Kitaj
BAGHDAD, 1972
Six Color Screenprint and Photoscreenprint
20 × 14 1/2 inches
Pencil signed and numbered 1/125
Printed at Kelpra Studio, London
Published by ...
Category
1970s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
R.B. Kitaj Screenprint Collage Hand Signed British Pop Art Film Still Camel
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
The Most Important Film Ever Made, 1972
Color screen print and collage, from the edition of 70.
15 x 17 in
38.1 x 43.2 cm
Published by the artist with Marlborough Graphics at the Kelpra studio in 1972. This work is also in the collections of TATE London and the Victoria & Albert Museum. the price reflects the fact that there is no backing page.
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 lithograph and silkscreen 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...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Original Vintage London Underground Poster Michelangelo Victoria Albert Museum
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in London, GB
Original vintage London Underground poster - Find Michelangelo at the V&A nearest station South Kensington - featuring a sketch pasti...
Category
1990s Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Paper
Portrait of Chris Prater
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Llanbrynmair, GB
’Chris Prater’
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Medium - Screen Print
Signed - Yes
Edition - 150
Size - 630mm x 920mm
Date - 1980
Condition - 10
Colour of print may not be accurate when viewe...
Category
1980s Other Art Style Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
the Spirit of the Ghetto Screenprint British Pop Art RB Kitaj Judaica Silkscreen
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1970s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Cap'n A.B Dick (A) gray fisherman portrait sou'wester hat R.B. Kitaj lithograph
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
Kitaj’s drawing is of a fisherman in profile, wearing a sou’wester: a collapsible rain hat. The image is a wry portrait, ostensibly of Albert Blake Dick, ...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
"Performing Arts Center" lithograph by R. B. Kitaj from "New York, New York"
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Boca Raton, FL
"Performing Arts Center" lithograph of dancers and musicians by R. B. (Ronald Brooks) Kitaj from the "New York, New York" portfolio published by the New York Graphic Society. Signed ...
Category
1980s Contemporary Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
Vintage SIGNED Kitaj Poster, La Fabbrica, Milan (A Life 1975) woman in red dress
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
Printed in 1975, this poster features the encounter between an alluring woman dressed in red, and a man with his back to the viewer. The light of a streetlamp is beautifully imitated...
Category
Late 20th Century Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
Nude Sculpture R.B. Kitaj drawing of nude woman on handmade orange paper print
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
Here Kitaj depicts a sculpture of a nude woman, shaded delicately in black, printed on wonderfully textured handmade muted orange paper. The woman’s hand reaches to the inside of her thigh, and she stands with her right leg turned out to the side, gazing downward with eyes closed. This print is a sensitively-drawn example of Kitaj's interest in playful, sensual compositions that were often inspired by art historical references, such as Edward Degas...
Category
Late 20th Century Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
Dominie in Catalonia, Kitaj drawing black white portrait of young girl with hat
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
This hand-drawn black and white portrait of Dominie, Kitaj’s adopted daughter, is one of the few etchings produced by the artist. The shape of Dominie’s wide sunhat and its patterned...
Category
Late 20th Century Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Etching
FIRST SERIES - SOME POETS.
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Portland, ME
Kitaj, R. B. FIRST SERIES - SOME POETS. Marlborough AG, Schellenburg, FL, 1970. Number 69 of the edition of 70 (there were about 15 additional proofs for the Artist, the Printer, and...
Category
1970s Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
A Life (B) R.B. Kitaj Film noir night city scene of woman in red dress
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
Signed by the artist and numbered 49/50 lower left in pencil. Color lithograph on mauve Wookey Hole handmade waterleaf paper.
This print features the encounter between an alluring ...
Category
Late 20th Century Expressionist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
In Our Time - China of Today, Print by Ronald Brooks Kitaj
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: R. B. Kitaj, American (1932 - 2007)
Title: In Our Time - China of Today
Year: 1970
Medium: Screenprint, signed 'RK' in pencil
Edition: 150
Image Size: 18 x 23 inches
Size: 22...
Category
1970s Conceptual Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Dr Claribel & Miss Etta (Cone Sisters) British Pop Artist Kitaj Pastel Drawing
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1990s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Charcoal, Pastel
The Flood of Laymen
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
screenprint, edition of 70
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
The Desire for Lunch is a Bourgeois Obsessional Neurosis or Grey Schizoids
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
12 color screenprint, photo-screenprint on buff Hodomuragami paper
edition of 70
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Ed Dorn
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
color silkscreen, edition of 70
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
From the Lives of the Saints
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
R.B. Kitaj
From the Lives of Saints, 1975
color screenprint
40 1/2 x 28 inches
Edition of 70
Category
1970s Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Acheson Go Home
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
This piece is a color silkscreen, constructed from various pieces of propaganda that Kitaj encountered while studying in Vienna in 1951. It also includes photographs of Kitaj himself...
Category
1960s Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Ezra Pound II
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
Abstract male figure on silkscreen
R.B. Kitaj was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932, and as a child attended art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Following his studies at Coo...
Category
1970s Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Related Items
Jean Cocteau - Marine Mountains - Original Lithograph
By Jean Cocteau
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
Jean Cocteau - Marine Mountains - Original Lithograph
Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm
Edition: 200
In Rives
From: COCTEAU. — VERDET (André). Montagnes marines. S. l. (Paris), Les Messagers du...
Category
1960s Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
H 22.05 in W 14.97 in D 0.04 in
Three Deer, Pop Art Screenprint by Hunt Slonem
By Hunt Slonem
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Hunt Slonem, American (1951 - )
Title: Three Deer
Year: 1980
Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil
Edition: AP 30
Image Size: 24 x 32 inches
Size: 26 in. ...
Category
1980s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Original Mardi Gras New Orleans 1978 festival serigraph poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Mardi Gras, New Orleans, 1978 linen-backed poster. Dressed up in what would be an American Indian costume with full headgear, he is holding a shield with a horse on it. Indian decoration on the footwear. Signed and numbered.
I believe this has to deal with Big Chief leading his Congo Nation Mardi Gras Indian group. Zulu Parade. Many of the original Mardi Gras jazz posters...
Category
1970s American Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
H 32 in W 23 in D 0.05 in
WOMAN LONG DARK HAIR Signed Lithograph, Serious Young Woman, Pink V-Neck
By Raphael Soyer
Located in Union City, NJ
WOMAN LONG DARK HAIR is an original hand drawn (not digitally or photo reproduced) limited edition lithograph by the artist Raphael Soyer - Russian/American Social Realism Painter, 1...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
SATIN SLIPPERS
By Douglas Hofmann
Located in Aventura, FL
Hand signed & numbered by the artist. Sheet size: 33 x 26 inches. Image size: 25 x 19.75 inches. Edition of 250.
Artwork is in excellent condition. Certificate of authenticity inc...
Category
1980s Contemporary Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Paper, Lithograph
JESSICA
By Douglas Hofmann
Located in Aventura, FL
Hand signed & numbered by the artist. AP edition.
Artwork is in excellent condition. Certificate of authenticity included. All reasonable offers will be considered.
Category
1980s Contemporary Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Paper, Lithograph
MARKET IN ERONGARICUARO
By Morton Dimondstein
Located in Santa Monica, CA
MORTON DIMONDSTEIN (NY 1920 - LA 2000)
MARKET IN ERONGARICUARO 1954
Serigraph, silkscreen. Signed titled and dated in pencil. Image 10 ¼ x 25 ½ inches. Large full sheet 17 1/4 x 30...
Category
1950s American Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Vibrant 1975 Joe Tilson British Pop Art Screenprint, Woodblock, Colorful Print
By Joe Tilson
Located in Surfside, FL
Silkscreen screenprint. Hand signed and numbered. A pyramid or ziggurat in vibrant colors of blue, red, yellow, orange and green on heavy paper
Joseph Charles Tilson RA (born 24 Au...
Category
1970s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Judy Rifka Abstract Expressionist Contemporary Lithograph Hebrew 10 Commandment
By Judy Rifka
Located in Surfside, FL
Judy Rifka (American, b. 1945)
44/84 Lithograph on paper titled "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness against Thy Neighbor"; Depicting an abstract composition in blue, green, red and black tones with Hebrew script. Judaica interest. (I have seen this print described as a screenprint and as a lithograph)
Hand signed in pencil and dated alongside an embossed pictorial blindstamp of a closed hand with one raised index finger. Solo Press.
From The Ten Commandments Kenny Scharf; Joseph Nechvatal; Gretchen Bender; April Gornik; Robert Kushner; Nancy Spero; Vito Acconci; Jane Dickson; Judy Rifka; Richard Bosman and Lisa Liebmann.
Judy Rifka (born 1945) is an American woman artist active since the 1970s as a painter and video artist. She works heavily in New York City's Tribeca and Lower East Side and has associated with movements coming out of the area in the 1970s and 1980s such as Colab and the East Village, Manhattan art scene. A video artist, book artist and abstract painter, Rifka is a multi-faceted artist who has worked in a variety of media in addition to her painting and printmaking. She was born in 1945 in New York City and studied art at Hunter College, the New York Studio School and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
Rifka took part in the 1980 Times Square Show, (Organized by Collaborative Projects, Inc. in 1980 at what was once a massage parlor, with now-famous participants such as Jenny Holzer, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kiki Smith, the roster of the exhibition reads like a who’s who of the art world), two Whitney Museum Biennials (1975, 1983), Documenta 7, Just Another Asshole (1981), curated by Carlo McCormick and received the cover of Art in America in 1984 for her series, "Architecture," which employed the three-dimensional stretchers that she adopted in exhibitions dating to 1982; in a 1985 review in the New York Times, Vivien Raynor noted Rifka's shift to large paintings of the female nude, which also employed the three-dimensional stretchers. In a 1985 episode of Miami Vice, Bianca Jagger played a character attacked in front of Rifka's three-dimensional nude still-life, "Bacchanaal", which was on display at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Rene Ricard wrote about Rifka in his influential December 1987 Art Forum article about the iconic identity of artists from Van Gogh to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, The Radiant Child.The untitled acrylic painting on plywood, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, demonstrates the artist's use of plywood as a substrate for painting. Artist and writer Mark Bloch called her work "imaginative surfaces that support experimental laboratories for interferences in sensuous pigment." According to artist and curator Greg de la Haba, Judy Rifka's irregular polygons on plywood "are among the most important paintings of the decade".
In 2013, Rifka's daily posts on Facebook garnered a large social media audience for her imaginative "selfies," erudite friendly comments, and widely attended solo and group exhibitions, Judy Rifka's pop art figuration is noted for its nervous line and frenetic pace. In the January 1998 issue of Art in America, Vincent Carducci echoed Masheck, “Rifka reworks the neo-classical and the pop, setting all sources in quotation for today’s art-world cognoscenti.” Rifka, along with artists like David Wojnarowicz, helped to take Pop sensibility into a milieu that incorporated politics and high art into Postmodernism; Robert Pincus-Witten stated in his 1988 essay, Corinthian Crackerjacks & Passing Go that "Rifka’s commitment to process and discovery, doctrine with Abstract Expressionist practice, is of paramount concern though there is nothing dogmatic or pious about Rifka’s use of method. Playful rapidity and delight in discovery is everywhere evident in her painting." In 2016, a large retrospective of Rifka's art was shown at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai. In 2017, Gregory de la Haba presented a Rifka retrospective at the Amstel Gallery in The Yard, a section of Manhattan described as "a labyrinth of small cubicles, conference rooms and small office spaces that are rented out to young entrepreneurs, professionals and hipsters". In 2019 her video Bubble Dancers New Space Ritual was selected for the International Istanbul Bienali.
Alexandra Goldman Talks To Judy Rifka About Ionic Ironic: Mythos from the '80s at CORE:Club and the Inexistence of "Feminist Art" Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. She was included in "50 Contemporary Women Artists", a book comprising a refined selection of current and impactful artists. The foreword is by Elizabeth Sackler of the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Additional names in the book include sculptor and carver Barbara Segal...
Category
1980s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph, Screen
Rising I, lithograph by Trevor Southey
By Trevor Southey
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Male nude lithograph by Trevor Southey. Charcoal gray. There was also an edition done in terra cotta.
Trevor Southey was born in Rhodesia, Africa (now Zimbabwe) in 1940. His African...
Category
1980s Contemporary Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
SEATED WOMAN ARMS CROSSED Signed Lithograph, Young Woman Arms Crossed, Blue Tee
By Raphael Soyer
Located in Union City, NJ
SEATED WOMAN CROSSED ARMS is an original hand drawn (not digitally or photo reproduced) limited edition lithograph by the artist Raphael Soyer - Russian/American Social Realism Paint...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
1970s Pop Art "Dancing Lessons #2" Silver Silkscreen Mod Ballet Girl Print
By Joanne Seltzer
Located in Surfside, FL
Printed on a slightly reflective metallic silver finished paper. there is a companion piece on a money green paper. A depiction of a ballet dancer, superimposed upon canceled dance c...
Category
1970s American Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
Previously Available Items
American portrait of film director John Ford by Ronald Brooks Kitaj
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Petworth, West Sussex
• 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...
Category
20th Century Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Paper, Crayon
H 13.88 in W 10.88 in D 1 in
Some do not (A) R.B. Kitaj erotic nude drawing of nude blonde with man on bed
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
A Rash Act: erotic drawing of nude blonde, redhead, and man with art deco motifs
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
1970s Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
La Fabbrica, Milan (A Life 1975) signed vintage poster, woman in red dress
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
Late 20th Century Modern Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
R.B. Kitaj Orgasm: drawing of woman in ecstasy with pale pink and clay red
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category
Late 20th Century Realist Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Lithograph
Vintage Poster British Pop Art 1972 Munich Olympic Swimmer R.B. KItaj
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1970s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Offset
Dr Claribel & Miss Etta (Cone Sisters) British Pop Artist Kitaj Pastel Drawing
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1990s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Charcoal, Pastel
Performing Arts Center from the New York, NY Portfolio, by Ronald Brooks Kitaj
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Long Island City, NY
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...
Category
1980s Contemporary Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Materials
Screen
H 29.5 in W 22 in D 0.1 in
R.B. Kitaj "The Jerwish Question"
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
R.B.Kitaj LA LUCHA DEL PUEBLO ESPANOL POR SU LIBERTAD
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
R.B. Kitaj Screenprint "Der Russische Revolutionsfilm" from: In Our Time
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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
.6 colour screenprint, photo screenprint.
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...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
R.B. Kitaj "Die Donau" From In Our Time: Covers for a Small Library
By Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Located in Surfside, FL
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. ...
Category
1960s Pop Art Ronald Brooks Kitaj Art
Ronald Brooks Kitaj art for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Ronald Brooks Kitaj art available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of art to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of blue, orange, purple and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Ronald Brooks Kitaj in screen print, lithograph, charcoal and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the Pop Art style. Not every interior allows for large Ronald Brooks Kitaj art, so small editions measuring 14 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of John Grillo, Zane Fix, and Seymour Chwast. Ronald Brooks Kitaj art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $224 and tops out at $4,200, while the average work can sell for $1,450.