Ken Kiff, RA (29 May 1935 – 15 February 2001) was an English figurative artist, who was born in Dagenham and trained at Hornsey School of Art 1955-61.
His 30-year teaching career at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College influenced a generation of students.
His commitment to the pictorial values of modernism, his deep respect for artists such as Klee, Miro or Marc Chagall, and his ideas about painting were often at odds with prevailing assumptions.
He enjoyed how new ways of working with materials, the grain of the wood, for example, or the wax in the encaustics, could extend his visual thinking and force him to make decisions more quickly.
He took great pleasure in collaborating with master printmaking technicians such as Dorothea Wight and Mark Balakjian in Britain, Erik Hollgersson in Sweden, and Garner Tullis in the US.