R. B. Kitaj valuation
American painter in London who named the School of London and filled his pictures with books and history.
R. B. Kitaj (1932–2007) was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and took the surname of his stepfather, Walter Kitaj, a Viennese research chemist.
What a work by R. B. Kitaj is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
R. B. Kitaj (1932–2007) was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and took the surname of his stepfather, Walter Kitaj, a Viennese research chemist. He went to sea as a merchant seaman at seventeen, studied at the Cooper Union in New York and the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, served two years in the United States Army, and came to England in 1958 to study at the Ruskin School in Oxford and then at the Royal College of Art, alongside David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Allen Jones and Patrick Caulfield. His first solo exhibition, at Marlborough New London Gallery in 1963, set the pattern of pictures dense with reference to literature, history and politics. In 1976 he curated The Human Clay at the Hayward Gallery, and in its catalogue coined the phrase School of London for Bacon, Freud, Auerbach, Kossoff, Michael Andrews and others. He lived in England until 1997, when he settled in Los Angeles.
His paintings, pastels, drawings and screenprints all appear, and the prints are the largest part. Many were made with the printer Chris Prater at Kelpra Studio in London, among them In Our Time (1969), fifty screenprints of book covers. A buyer will want the edition, the number and the signature, and for paintings and pastels the history of the work, which often runs back to Marlborough. Pastels and works on paper should be checked for fading, rubbing and damage to the surface.
At a glance
- Born
- 29 October 1932, Chagrin Falls
- Died
- 21 October 2007, Los Angeles
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
