R.B. Kitaj, Drancy, 1984–1986
Pastel and coal on paper,
100 × 78 cm
© R.B. Kitaj Estate/Collection du Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme, Dépôt de la Fondation du Judaïsme Français
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A few years after a visit to Drancy R.B. Kitaj composed this pastel drawing of the same name.
Kitaj and his second wife, Sandra Fisher, spent a year in Paris from 1982–83. There they met the Israeli painter Avigdor Arikha (1929-2010) and his wife, an American writer named Anne Atik. During his time in France, Kitaj travelled together with Anne to the former internment camp at Drancy in north-eastern Paris. From 1941 to 1944, 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy to concentration camps in Eastern Europe.
“Drancy” and another drawing based on a photograph Kitaj took during his visit to Drancy were published by Kitaj in 1989 in a limited edition volume together with a poem by Anne Atik.
"When I lived for a year in Paris, my friend Anne Atik and I took a suburban train to Drancy to see the place where the Jews of Paris were collected by their hosts for their trip to oblivion. We took a suburban train to what had become a nowhere town, largely foreign working-class I think. No taxis; so we walked and walked thru desolate streets till we found a municipal building where someone knew where the camp had been. Another walk and we found it, a massive housing estate for workers, Moslem I think. There were some crumby plaques in French and Hebrew. This was the Vichy holding-camp for thousands of rounded up Paris Jews, awaiting their train rides to Auschwitz. I thought of Picasso’s pal Max Jacob, the gay Catholic Jew who died at Drancy before the Inferno got him. There was gossip that when Picasso was asked to help, he said Max was an angel who could fly over walls. Later, Anne and I did a little publication called Drancy: her poem and my two drawings."
from: Kitaj Interviewed by Richard Morphet, in: Richard Morphet (Hrsg.), R.B. Kitaj: A Retrospective, Tate Gallery 1994
R.B. Kitaj on his painting "Drancy" (Excerpt from the exhibition's audio guide, narrator: Peter Rigney)
