A Life Forged in Displacement and Vision Ronald Brooks Kitaj, born in 1932 in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, was an artist whose journey mirrored the tumultuous currents of the twentieth century. His early life was marked by a sense of rootlessness; his Hungarian immigrant father departed shortly after his birth, leaving him to be raised by his mother, Jeanne Brooks, a woman who embodied resilience through multiple professions—teacher and steelworker alike. This upbringing instilled in Kitaj a profound empathy for the struggles of ordinary people and a feeling of being perpetually on the periphery, th…