albert bitran

İstanbul, 1929

Albert Bitran, traveled to Paris to study architecture at the age of 20. There, he quickly joined the circle of American and Latin painters and began to take interest in painting. His first works were linked to the geometrical abstract, but he soon developed his own artistic language. In 1951, he opened his first solo exhibition at the Arnaud Gallery - the avangarde scene of Paris. In the following years, apart from continuing solo exhibitions, his works were included in group shows organized in Cuba, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. During the same years, Bitran’s paintings were also displayed at the Galerie Iris Clert, one of Paris’ most prominent galleries, which also exhibited the works of Mübin Orhon on a regular basis. In mid 1960’s, he began working closely on etching and lithography. It is with these techniques that he illustrated books and worked in collaboration with writers and poets on several other projects. A retrospective of his original prints was held in 1983 at the National Museum of Painting and Sculpture in Istanbul.

His solo exhibitions held in Turkey in 1997 and 1999 included some of the most significant examples of his series entitled “Arcades”, inspired from the Oriental, and mostly Anatolian landscape. Bitran’s works were last exhibited in France in 2006, during the exhibition entitled “Envolée Lyrique: Paris 1945-1956” at the Musée Luxembourg in Paris. The exhibition brought together representative works from the years in which École de Paris was most influential in the international art scene. Extensive coverage was given, in the catalogue and DVD compiled for that exhibition, to interviews held with Bitran regarding that period.