RB KITAJ | DOMINIE AT SAN FELÍU, 1978
RB Kitaj, Dominie at San Felíu, 1978, pastel and charcoal on paper, courtesy of Piano NobileRJ Kitaj was taught drawing by Percy Horton, who was taught by Walter Sickert, who was taught by Edgar Degas. Is it fanciful to see the connection between the French master and the American artist?
Kitaj, who spent his formative years in England, had a big influence on British pop art, and never stopped experimenting with style, form and medium, but he was, above all, an exceptional draftsman: the critic Robert Hughes called him ‘better than almost anyone else’. This 1978 pastel representation of his then-teenage daughter Dominie (who he and his first wife Eli had adopted in 1964) is a fine example of his mastery of figure drawing. He drew and painted portraits throughout his life, preferring to use friends and family as models, rather than paid sitters. In his last decade, he obsessively created self-portraits, and, from memory, of his second wife Sandra, who died from an aneurysm in 1994, shortly after his retrospective at the Tate had been brutally savaged by the critics. Blaming the British press for her death, he had returned to the United States, where he died, by his own hand, in 2007.
It's worth taking a trip to Piano Nobile in Holland Park to have an up-close look at the Dominie piece, in pastel and charcoal, which is life-sized, and exceptionally striking. It is part of the gallery’s latest show, Drawn to Paper (until May 12) which also includes work by Bonnard, Giacometti, Gauguin, Miró, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach. The latter two artists were, of course, also members of the so-called ‘School of London’ (a phrase coined by Kitaj). There are also two pieces by his lifelong friend David Hockney, including – a nice touch this – a portrait of a younger Dominie Kitaj, sitting rather glumly by the pool, executed in 1971.
Piano Nobile, who run the RB Kitaj estate, have two galleries, opposite one another on Portland Road in W11. You can also read a review of their fine Jean Cooke exhibition, Seascapes and Chalk Caves, in this section. In partnership with the Ruth Borchard Collection, the gallery run an annual self-portrait prize, which is open for submissions until March 31. And finally – exciting news, this – PN’s Roberta Travers tells us that the gallery will hold a major Kitaj exhibition in the autumn, with previously unseen works on show and an accompanying publication.