kitaj

he was restless always. teaching art in london in the 1960s, he would slip away from his family at weekends to fly to frankfurt, or athens, or amsterdam--anywhere--to stalk the streets, smell the kitchens, take that murky staircase up to the second floor, and draw what he found. he was a compulsive boulevardier, haunting cafes and bordellos to catch in his sketchbook the chance meetings, assignations and corner solitudes that made the matter of his pictures. nothing was settled, nowhere was home, because the state of "unfinish" was also his own condition.--'ronald kitaj,' painter of the human condition