Kitaj, R. B. definition of Kitaj, R. B. in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Kitaj, R. B. (Ronald Brooks Kitaj), 1932–, American painter, b. Chagrin Falls, Ohio. In 1959 he moved to London, where he attended the Ruskin School and the Royal College of Art and became more closely associated with British rather than American painting. Kitaj and his friend David Hockney Hockney, David, 1937–, English painter. Moving from a distorted, semiexpressionist form of pop art , Hockney developed a highly personal realistic style, producing images saturated with color that are witty and uniquely in the moment.
..... Click the link for more information. were both involved with the beginnings of the pop art pop art, a movement that first emerged in Great Britain at the end of the 1950s as a reaction against the seriousness of abstract expressionism . British and American pop artists employed a common imagery found in comic strips, soup cans, and Coke bottles to express
..... Click the link for more information. movement in Britain. Kitaj's often sexually charged paintings are grounded in exquisite figurative drawing, their smooth surfaces splashed with areas of bright color and covered with collagelike intersecting and interlapping planes, people, and objects. His strong intellectual interests, including surrealism surrealism (sərē`əlĭzəm)
..... Click the link for more information. , art and political history, literature, and Jewish identity, are themes that run through his work. His paintings of the late 1980s and 1990s (e.g., The Wedding, 1989–90, Tate Gallery) have taken on a more personal cast. In 1997 he returned to the United States, settling in Hollywood.

Kitaj, R. B. (Ronald Brooks) (1932– ) painter; born in Cleveland, Ohio. His family moved to Troy, N.Y. (1943), he studied at Cooper Union, New York (1950–51), and in Germany (1951–53) and England (1957–c. 62), where he settled permanently and gained a major reputation. Using many mediums, he created surrealistic images of tormented people, as in If Not, Not (1975–76).