Exhibition: R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles

The first major retrospective of R.B. Kitaj in the UK for a decade features over 40 paintings, pastels and drawings, covering all major periods of his work, from student days at the Royal College of Art, to his final contemplative years in Los Angeles.

The exhibition will include rarely seen works, some of which have not been on public display for over fifty years. There will also be a broad selection of Kitaj’s lesser-known paintings from the LA period, allowing them to be re-discovered in the context of his enduring and extraordinary career, from beginning to end.

Kitaj was at the centre of a peer group that included David Hockney, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, and came to help define a new generation of artists from the 1960s. He was determined to pursue figurative painting whether it was in or out of fashion in critical circles, with a dedication to the human figure, art history and the great painters from Giotto to Cézanne. His friends and peers would also be his subjects, and Kitaj’s drawing of Hockney, D.H in Hollywood (1971) will be exhibited in public for the very first time.

Kitaj’s final triumph in his lifetime would be an exhibition dedicated to his work in the National Gallery, London. The exhibition had been the prompt for some of his LA-based work, and it allowed for his pictures to be hung alongside his much-loved Cézanne. Alas, Kitaj did not travel to London to see this achievement, and he never returned before his death in 2007. But now, with R.B Kitaj: London to Los Angeles at Piano Nobile, a whole range of his works from the trail-blazing student days to the contemplative and grief-induced final years can be seen in the city that was his home for so many years.