The exhibition will go on display at the gallery from the 1st October until the 27th November.
It has been announced that this autumn the Piano Nobile, will display rarely seen works from the early stages of R. B. Kitaj’s (1932–2007) career to capture his use of collage, fragmentation and composition that led him to become one of the most sought-after painters of the 20th century.
This new show will feature over 40 works by the artist including collages, paintings, and drawings — some that have never been seen outside the artist’s native United States.
The Ohio-born Kitaj lived and worked mostly in England, part of a peer group of artists alongside David Hockney, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, and helped originate a new form of post-painterly creation that allowed for juxtaposition and ambiguity.
A key point of his work was his interest in fragmentation, inspired in part by his reading of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), and which would result in him creating his own fragments and combining them so that entire worlds collided in a single image.
This new exhibition of Kitaj’s work follows on from Piano Nobile’s 2023 exhibition (R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles), which helped to reacquaint the artist’s adopted country with his work. This new presentation of the artist’s work spanning over 15 years from career beginnings to maturity, will delve deeper into the technique and form that established Kitaj as one of his generation’s leading pioneers.
The Kitaj family said: “So much of Kitaj’s art comes from the careful juxtaposition of fragmented parts of what he loved most and what he experienced. He was by no means a purist and allowed room in his paintings and collages for reference to poetry, literature, current events, cinema, history and images of those closest to him. As he referenced, he wanted ‘plural energies’ in his art. We are glad to see this fundamental aspect of Kitaj’s
work highlighted in Piano Nobile’s ‘From Fragments’ exhibition.”
To find out more visit: https://www.piano-nobile.com/exhibitions/133-r.-b.-kitaj-from-fragments-19581975/