R. B. Kitaj

American painter and printmaker
American, (1932–2007)
Kitaj studied at Cooper Union, New York City, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the early 1950s. He relocated to London in 1958, where he continued his studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford and the Royal College of London. His first solo exhibition was at Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1963. In 1976 he organized "The Human Clay" at the Hayward Gallery, London, in which he identified a 'School of London:' primarily figurative works by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and Leon Kossoff. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1991. He returned to live in the United States in 1997 and remained there until his death.