Obsessions - R. B. Kitaj (1932-2007)

Together with his artist friends Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud and Leon Kossoff, the American artist R. B. Kitaj was one of the pioneers of a new type of figurative art in the 1960s. Ten years later, in the mid-1970s, Kitaj positioned himself as a Jewish artist and saw himself as an instigator of a modern Jewish art movement. It is worth rediscovering the importance of this aspect of Kitaj’s oeuvre. Strong colours and a wealth of motifs and pictorial citations, which add to the mystery of the painting, are characteristic of all his works.