Artwork details

Artist

Title

Cap'n A.B Dick (B)

Description

Cap'n A.B Dick (B)
Two color lithograph on heavyweight textured pink paper
Paper 18 x 22.25 in. / 46 x 56.4 cm
Image 6.75 x 8.1 in. / 17.4 x 20.6 cm
Edition 20. Printed by Ernie Donagh, London, and published by Petersburg Press. Signed by the artist and numbered 19/20 lower left in pencil. There is another version of this print on Barcham Green Badger Mamba hand made paper, edition of 30, plus 12 APs.

Kitaj’s drawing is of a man in profile, wearing a sou’wester: a fisherman’s collapsible rain hat. The image is a wry portrait, ostensibly of Albert Blake Dick, inventor of the mimeograph and founder of the AB Dick office supply company, based in Chicago.

A close friend of fellow Petersburg Press collaborator David Hockney, Kitaj was known as an expressive, superlative draftsman. Art critic Robert Hughes famously wrote of Kitaj in TIME magazine that “he draws better than almost anyone else alive.”

A copy of this lithograph is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Good condition with a mark on lower left of sheet as documented.

Date

1975

Medium

Colour Lithograph

Edition

Signature

Signed

Catalogue Raisonne

Jane Kinsman The Prints of R.B. Kitaj, Scolar Press in association with the National Gallery of Australia 1994, no. 83 Jennifer Ramkalawon Kitaj Prints: a catalogue raisonné, The British Museum Press 2013, no. 196.

Image

6.75 x 8.1 inches

Sheet

18 x 22.25 inches

Status

Available

Price

$1,200.00

R.B. Kitaj

R.B. Kitaj was born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He enjoyed an extensive period in academia during the 1950s, first studying at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York from 1950-51, then returning in 1952. He spent time in the Merchant Navy in 1951 also attending the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna. Kitaj then went on to the Ruskin School of drawing in Oxford in 1958-9, and the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1961. Kitaj recalled: “It was at the Royal College where, in the first week, I began my constant friendship with the amazing Hockney.”