R V Kitaj 1932-2007 an American artist born in Ohio , his Eastern Europe Jewish roots became a vital identifier in later life.
A superb draftsman, he studied drawing in Vienna, New York, Oxford . His tutors claimed direct teaching credentials from Degas, Cezanne, Ingres, Poussin. In the early 60’s Kitaj studied at the RCA, a contemporary of Hockney , they maintained a life time friendship and working relationship. Until 97, Kitaj worked in Britain, considered with Hockney, Blake, Pazolli the vanguard British Pop Art, a title he rejected, calling them New British Art. He was a polymath and an energetic art theorist, exploring identity,

Welcome every dread delight, 1962, showing influnces of collage screen printing, thin underpainting and astonishing colours.

an accomplished portraitist, here one of the many charcoal drawings of his daughter and mother, Kitaj worked and reworked his drawings, aided by an extraordinary paper card he discovered with Hockney ‘porridge paper’

nude and secret jew, Kitaj as the perfect draughtsman, using layers of thin paint.

in the 1990’s following a heavily criticised retrosepctive at the Tate, and the death of his second wife, Kitaj , deeply depressed, left the UK for California. His later expressive paintings and portraits show a freedom from his classical constraints. He died in 2007