Kitaj

"Kitaj is a painter who has always worked against the grain, generating massive controversies in the process. His talent as an artist, however, has secured him a place at the forefront of European and American painting for nearly half a century." "Ronald Brooks Kitaj was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932. His early education culminated in a period of travel as a merchant seaman, after which time he served in Europe in the United States Army (1956-58). As a mature student Kitaj enrolled at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, before transferring in 1959 to the Royal College of Art in London. There he assumed the informal leadership of an exceptionally talented group of students which was to become the Pop generation, and included David Hockney, Allen Jones and Patrick Caulfield. Kitaj's first solo exhibition was in London at Marlborough Fine Art in 1963, the gallery he continues to show with. From student days he made his home in London, until the public fracas surrounding his Tate Gallery retrospective (1994) and the sudden tragic death of his second wife, the painter Sandra Fisher, persuaded him to abandon England. In 1997 he moved to Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work."--BOOK JACKET.