1932 Born on October 29 in Chagrin Falls near Cleveland, Ohio as Ronald Brooks-Benway; his mother, Jeanne Brooks, is the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, his father Sigmund Benway leaves the family soon after Kitaj's birth
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R.B. Kitaj
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
- 1941 Jeanne Brooks marries Walter Kitaj, a Viennese Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1938
- 1949 Kitaj joins the crew of the freighter SS Corona; works as a merchant seaman for spells until 1954
- 1950 Studies at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York
- 1951/52 Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, with Fritz Wotruba and Albert Paris Gütersloh
- 1952 Second year of studies at Cooper Union
- 1953 Marries Elsi Roessler in New York (Protestant wedding). Returns to Vienna; first visit to Catalonia, Spain
- 1956/57 Serves in the U.S. Army in Darmstadt, Germany, and Fontainebleau, near Paris
- 1957-59 Studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford. Attends lectures by art historian Edgar Wind
- 1958 Birth of a son, Lemuel (Lem)
- 1959-61 Studies at the Royal College of Art, London; begins lifelong friendship with David Hockney
- 1963 First solo exhibition, at Marlborough Fine Art, London
- 1964 Adopts a daughter, Dominie
- 1965 Exhibition at the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York
- 1967/68 Teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, art department
- 1969 Death of Kitaj's first wife, Elsi Roessler
- 1970/71 Teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. Meets the American artist Sandra Fisher
- 1975 Visits an exhibition including works by Edgar Degas at Petit Palais, Paris
- 1978/79 Artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Teaches at Dartmouth College
- 1981/82 Retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany
- 1982 Residence in Paris
- 1983 Marries Sandra Fisher in London's Spanish and Portuguese (Sephardic) Bevis Marks Synagogue, according to traditional rites
- 1984 Birth of a son, Max
- 1988 Erstes Manifest des Diasporismus, Arche Verlag, Zurich
- 1989 First Diasporist Manifesto, Thames & Hudson, London
- 1994 Retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Death of Sandra Fisher
- 1995 Awarded the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale
- 1996/97 Exhibitions Sandra One, Sandra Three (both at the Royal Academy, London), and Sandra Two (FIAC international contemporary art fair 1996, Espace Eiffel Branly, Paris, organized by Marlborough Fine Art, London)
- 1997 Returns to the U.S. with son Max; settles in Westwood, Los Angeles
- 1998 Retrospective at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, the Jewish Museum Vienna, and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover
- 2001 Exhibition Kitaj - In the Aura of Cézanne and other Masters, National Gallery, London; Kitaj starts to write his autobiography Confessions of an old Jewish Painter
- 2003 Exhibition at the L.A. Louver Gallery, Los Angeles
- 2007 Second Diasporist Manifesto, Yale University Press, New Haven. R. B. Kitaj dies October 21
