R. B. Kitaj: From Fragments: 1958–1975

With paintings, drawings and collages, R. B. Kitaj: From Fragments 1958–1975 explores the unexpected ways that Kitaj combined source imagery in the early years of his career. Many works have not been exhibited in decades and the collages, which Kitaj kept in his studio during his life, have never been shown outside the United States. Caught between mass imagery and painterly abstraction, Kitaj and his generation responded with unconventional approaches. By combining obscure source images, often taken from films and old books, Kitaj made new images charged with personal and historical significance.

In 1958, Kitaj made his first modern painting in England after he secured funding from the G. I. Bill to study art at the Ruskin School of Drawing. It was painted in the manner of Willem de Kooning and represented doodles by the humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam. In the ensuing years he proceeded to manipulate style and subject-matter as equally adaptable components in his goal to make artworks that ‘do research’.

In the early ’sixties, Kitaj began to paste collage onto his paintings. This activity encompassed a genre of modernist history painting unique to himself. Where many of his contemporaries were inspired by commercial mass-produced imagery and branding, Kitaj alone used imagery found in iconographical studies of the medieval and early modern periods. The fruit of his endeavours was exhibited to widespread acclaim in his first solo exhibition in February 1963, and Kitaj’s reputation as one of the most gifted painters of his generation was established.

In 1962 or ’63, Eduardo Paolozzi introduced Kitaj to the printmaker Chris Prater. They began to collaborate on screenprints in 1964, and from this point Kitaj’s activity in papier collé was mostly confined to making collages, many of which were used as models for screenprints. Meanwhile Kitaj continued to make paintings from fragmentary sources the combination of which gave rise to strange and beautiful images. Only when his focus shifted to life drawing in the mid-seventies did he begin to seek a more integrated, less ruptured art.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication that includes new research into the artist’s sources and his bricolage technique. Piano Nobile represents the R. B. Kitaj Estate.

For further information and available works please contact the gallery >