Peter Kitchell believes that "Color is like music. One color is meaningless by itself, it takes its
meaning from its relationship to other colors, from the rhythm of its structure."
The child of two architects, Kitchell was primed to be an artist at an early age and
encouraged to paint. After the family moved from Exeter, NH to San Francisco, Kitchell
attended art classes for children at the Museum of Modern Art and De Young Museum
beginning at five and was exposed to modern abstract painting by the age of nine.
In the late '60s he studied with Rolf Penn, a former Bauhaus student of Kandinsky and
Klee. By 1970 and technically proficient, Kitchell decided that he could learn more from travel
than school and set off on a journey that took him through Europe, Northern and Central
Africa, the Caribbean and across the United States. Shortly thereafter, he went from the
museums of Europe to the raw desert culture of Morocco, travelling throughout the African
continent. Kitchell painted or drew every day, teaching himself watercolor while living among
the Berber and Tuareg tribes.
His large scale watercolors reference nature, both primal and pastoral, influences of the
landscapes and cultures he has experienced, the light and color absorbed during those travels.
Kitchell's paintings "...are not really abstract," but rather, "are objects, pictures of things. The
paintings are elements of a story that unconsciously suggest 'something.' I am successful if I
can figure out what they suggest in a universal way...creating a picture story."
Kitchell shows consistently at several galleries and his works are included in the
prestigious corporate collections of AT&T, Dean Witter & Co., ITEL, Stanford University, Bank
of America, ARCO, Westinghouse Corporation and IBM Corporation.
BIRTHPLACE: Cambridge, MA
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS:
Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
Palo Alto Cultural Center, Palo Alto, CA
Stanford University Art Museum, Stanford, CA
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