Ronald Brooks Kitaj, “Novella in Terre Verte”, 1992, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 60 Inches

Ronald Brooks Kitaj was an American artist who spent much of his life in England. He became a merchant seaman with a Norwegian freighter when he was seventeen. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Cooper Union in New York City. After serving in the US Army for two years, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford and then the Royal College of Art in London.

Kitaj had a significant impact on British pop art, with his figurative paintings featuring areas of bright color, economic use of line and overlapping planes which resemble collages. His more complex compositions built on his line work using a montage practice, which he called ‘agitational usage’. Kitaj often depicted disorienting landscapes and impossible 3D constructions, with exaggerated and pliable human forms. He often assumed a detached outsider point of view, in conflict with dominant historical narratives.