38. R.B. KITAJ
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Marynka Smoking
1980 (180 Kb); Pastel and charcoal on paper, 90.8 x 56.5 cm (35 3/4 x 22 1/4 in); Collection of the artist |
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The Oak Tree
1991 (190 Kb); Oil on canvas, 152.7 x 152.4 cm (60 1/8 x 60 in); Private collection |
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The Ohio Gang
1964 (120 Kb); Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 182.9 cm (72 x 72 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York |
BIO & STEPS
Born:
In
1932 in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, United States
He died in 2007
in Los Angeles, California, United States
Studies:
He was
educated at Troy High School. 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).
His first solo exhibition was held at Marlborough Fine
Art, London in 1963.
He taught at the University of California Berkeley in
1967-8 and the University of California Los Angeles in 1970-1. In 1972 he
returned to London.
In 1976 Kitaj selected for the Arts Council of Great
Britain a group of British works, connected by a common theme, which formed the
core of an exhibition called The Human Clay. The show included works by Bacon,
Freud, Auerbach, Kossoff, Moore, Hodgkin, Hockney, Kitaj himself, and others.
He died in Los Angeles in October 2007, eight days
before his 75th birthday.[5] Seven weeks after Kitaj's death, the Los Angeles
County coroner ruled that the cause of death was suicide by suffocation, saying
the artist placed a plastic bag over his head.
Themes and
style:
Kitaj
had a significant influence on British Pop art, with his figurative paintings
featuring areas of bright colour, economic use of line and overlapping planes
which made them resemble collages, but eschewing most abstraction and modernism.[citation
needed] Allusions to political history, art, literature and Jewish identity
often recur in his work, mixed together on one canvas to produce a collage
effect.
Edgar Wind
encouraged him to become a 'Warburgian artist'.[13] His more complex
compositions build on his line work using a montage practice, which he called
'agitational usage'. Kitaj often depicts disorienting landscapes and impossible
3D constructions, with exaggerated and pliable human forms. He often assumes a
detached outsider point of view, in conflict with dominant historical
narratives.
Techniques:
His work is developed in paintings and
prints.
Exhibitions
His various honours include election to
the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982. In 1985 he became the first
American since Sargent to be elected to the Royal Academy. Numerous
retrospective exhibitions of his work have been held, including shows at the
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC and tour 1981-2; and the Tate Gallery, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1994-5.
In his own words:
"Never ever believe an artist if he
says he doesn't care what the critics write about him. Every artist cares.
Those reviews of my show were by pathetic, sick, meagre hacks. They were about
small lives and lousy marriages."
Representative
Galleries:
Ramis Barquet
Lacan
Inverarte
For
more Information:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/feb/10/rb-kitaj-obsessions-tate-war
En
Español:
http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen/ficha_artista/310