Ken Kiff

The catalogue raisonne of Ken Kiff's prints. Among celebrated British artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Ken Kiff RA (1935-2001) displayed one of the most individual and distinctive styles. His paintings and drawings, created in a wide variety of media, are characterized by radiant colour and fantastic flights of the imagination which in recent years have gained renewed attention in the context of contemporary figurative painting. Unafraid to hold a somewhat solitary position, his commitment to the pictorial values of modernism, and his regard for artists such as Klee, Miro and Chagall meant that his ideas about painting were often at odds with prevailing artistic movements: his subject matter was deeply rooted in his knowledge of music and poetry, resonating with enchantment and dreaminess, but also sometimes with a dark or grotesque edge. During the 1980s his range of media expanded to include almost every printmaking technique, and he collaborated with master printmakers from the UK, Europe and America, including Dorothea Wight, Erik Hollgersson and Garner Tullis. These prints are now collected in their entirety in this catalogue raisonne, which draws on archived materials, diaries and letters, together with memories from all his collaborators in the medium. Including an essay by Richard Lloyd, International Head of Prints at Christie's, and a foreword by Kiff's student at the Royal College of Art, Tracey Emin, this definitive volume forms part of a timely reappraisal on the work of this influential and underappreciated 20th-century British artist.