June 7 – September 30, 2018
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education presents the first Northwest overview of work by renowned artist R.B. Kitaj
Organized by OJMCHE and curated by Bruce Guenther, R.B. Kitaj: A Jew Etc., Etc. provides the first Northwest overview of one of the most important post-1960 contemporary artists, R.B. Kitaj. The exhibition presents a survey of 16 oil paintings and four drawings, focusing on works created between 1990 and the artist’s death in 2007, which reflect the artist’s deep exploration of a rich complexity of ideas and references to art history and Judaism.
R. B. Kitaj (1932-2007) is one of the twentieth century’s most significant and thought-provoking artists, who, throughout his life and his art, tussled with the conditions of “Jewishness”. Kitaj’s sometimes controversial work has long challenged audiences to explore radical new aesthetic models and narrative themes. The work in R.B. Kitaj: A Jew Etc., Etc. is drawn from the last two decades of Kitaj’s life, when his work focused intensely on his identity as a Jew as he created an extensive body of work around himself, his late wife, American artist Sandra Fisher, and historic personalities in the humanities such as Franz Kafka, philosophers Walter Benjamin, and Gershom Scholem.
R. B. Kitaj, A Jew, Etc. Etc, is generously supported by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, the Leonard & Lois Schnitzer Family Fund of OJCF, the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Family Fund at OJCF/Arlene Schnitzer & Jordan Schnitzer and the Regional Arts and Culture Council.