R. B. Kitaj

American, 1932-2007

Setpiece 1 from the portfolio Struggle in the West: The Bombing of London

© Estate of R. B. Kitaj, courtesy, Marlborough Gallery, New York

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

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© Estate of R. B. Kitaj, courtesy, Marlborough Gallery, New York

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

Setpiece 1 from the portfolio Struggle in the West: The Bombing of London, 1969

Artwork Details

Materials

color screen print and photoscreenprint (buff version) on textured paper

Edition:

62/70

Measurements

sheet: 40 1/4 x 27 1/4 inches (102.24 x 69.21 cm)

Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Credit

Gift of Gordon Abrams, 1979

Accession ID

P1979:47.5

“Struggle in the West: The Bombing of London,” which R. B. Kitaj originally called “Horizon/Blitz,” centers on the City of London during the World War II blitz bombings and the contribution to the war efforts by four literary gentlemen: Cyril Connolly, Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, and the Rt. Hon. John Strachey. The suite, which features an amalgam of techniques, from screen printing to collaged photographs, is one of Kitaj’s most colorful groupings of prints. In the process of making Die gute alte Zeit, he instructed the printer to “Go for contrast—use a deep purple and complimentary yellow on one image, a flat orange and khaki green on another, etc. . . . I’ll leave it to you to find strange mixtures and I can correct what I don’t like.”

Label from R. B. Kitaj: Don’t Listen to the Fools, June 21–September 15, 2013

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