Ronald Brooks Kitaj RA (Oct 29, 1932-Oct. 21, 2007); American artist with Jewish roots, who spent much of his life in England. ... recognised as being one of the world's leading draftsmen, almost on a par with, or compared to, Degas. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._B._Kitaj) Born in Cleveland, OH. Studied at Cooper Union Institute, NY, 1950-1 and 1952... Student at the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna in 1951. He attended the Ruskin School, Oxford, 1958-9, and the Royal College of Art, 1959-61, where he met David Hockney, who became a close friend. First one-man exhibition was held at Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1963. 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. His 1983 marriage to the American artist Sandra Fisher is celebrated in his paintings Cecil Court, London WC2 (The Refugees) and The Wedding. 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. Kitaj's essay for the catalogue, in which he proposed the idea of a School of London, became one of the key art historical texts of the period. In 1989 he published the First Diasporist Manifesto, the longest and most impassioned of his many texts discussing the Jewish dimension in his art and thought. 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, LA County Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 1994-5. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997. (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/r-b-kitaj-1416) undefined

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