Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Zitman was born to a family of construction workers in Leiden, the Netherlands in 1926. He enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague at the age of fifteen. On completing his studies in 1947, he refused compulsory military participation, as he disagreed with the Netherlands' political actions in Indonesia, and fled the country aboard a Swedish oil tanker that would take him to Venezuela.