R. B. Kitaj was born in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1950 he studied at the Cooper Union Art Institute, New York, then in 1951, at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He settled in England and studied at the Royal College of Art (1960-62), where David Hockney became a long-lasting friend. Kitaj's first solo exhibition was at the Marlborough Gallery, London in 1963. He became a professor at University of California, Berkeley in 1967¬68 and, in 1993, married American painter, Sandra Fisher, in London. Kitaj was created ARA in 1984 and RA in 1991. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Tate Gallery in 1994, and subsequently toured in the US. In 1997 Kitaj moved to Los Angeles where he continued to work until his death ten years later.
