R.B. KITAJ, American (1932 - 2007)

    Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Viennese mother and Jewish stepfather, Ronald Brooks (R.B.) Kitaj became a noted painter and printmaker whose subjects were realistic and abstract figure and genre. Many of his works were inspired by his political ideas and by reactions to stories he heard from his family about the Nazis during World War II.

At an early age, he developed a compassion for persons less fortunate and became dedicated to socialism, which had a lasting effect on his life and work. He was stirred by discussions about the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and by the events during World War II in Europe, especially as recollected by his parents and his Jewish step-grandmother, who moved in with his family.

Kitaj also learned much on various voyages as a merchant seaman in Latin America and through attending art schools, first in 1950 at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, and in 1951 to 1952 at the Akademie der Bildenden Knste, Vienna, under Albert Paris von Gtersloh.

After his marriage in 1953 to Elsi Roessler, a fellow American student whom he had met in Vienna, he made his first extended visit to the Catalan port of San Felu de Guixols, and he continued to return their regularly over the next 30 years.

From 1955 to the end of 1957 he served in the American Army near Fontainebleau, where he drew pictures of the Russian tanks and installations for war games.