Ken Kiff (1935-2001) was one of the most singular artists who practised in Britain at the end of the 20th century. Trained at Hornsey School of Art (1955-61) he initially taught in schools before becoming a Tutor in Painting at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London where over thirty years he influenced generations of artists. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1991 and from 1991-1993 he worked as Associate Artist in Residence at the National Gallery. His work was exhibited internationally and is included in major public collections including Tate Britain; British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and MOMA, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘The National Gallery Project,’ Hales Gallery, London (2025); ‘Ken Kiff: Man, Bird and Tree,’ Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate (2022) and ‘Ken Kiff: The Sequence,’ Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts, Norwich (2018).
Kiff viewed painting as a form of affirmative visual poetics, aligned in its workings to music, upholding “Braques’s thought that the canvas comes alive as a musical instrument does when it is played”. His images were always led by color and encompassed a personal iconography of figuration (that was often misread as confessional) with abstract, and at times, symbolic elements. Dualities, the split self, the tumult of consciousness, were abiding themes, expressed in recurrent motifs – of journeys, encounters, caves, anthropomorphic landscapes – and held in arrangements that borrowed from Cubist traditions. His approach was challenging to a then dominant, critical hegemony that viewed painting primarily through the prism of theoretical standpoints. Today however, many aspects of his work are finding increasing currency with a younger generation of contemporary artists.