(1924-1997)

Born at Limanu, Constanta, in Romania. He trained at the School of Art, Bucharest. Exhibited widely since 1964 in Romania, Italy, Brazil, France, Germany, Scotland, The Netherlands, USA, Ireland, Japan,Yugoslavia, Norway, Spain, Hungary and Poland.

In 1980, he exhibited at the Salon de Paris; in 1981, in Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe, Osaka, Japan; at the International Drawing Triennale; at Warsaw; in Paper Caper, Frank Marino Gallery, New York. The PS1 Gallery, New York showed a one-person exhibition. In 1983 the Caminul Gallery, Bucharest, showed a one-person exhibition. In 1985 The Arts Council of Northern Ireland showed Ion Bitzan Works 1975 - 1985 in its Belfast Gallery.

He represented Romania in the Venice Biennale, 1964, and in 1997, and in the Sao Paolo Bienale, 1967, 1969 and 1981.

His work is included in public collections as follows: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Ariana, Geneva; The Kunsthalle, Hamburg; The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; The National Museum, Poznan, Poland; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Art Museum, Lidice, Czechoslovakia; in Romania, The Art Museum, Bucharest, and in Iasi, Galati, Craiova, and Constanta.

His work is included in private collections in Romania, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy, USA, Northern Ireland, England and Scotland.

Between 1971 - 1997 University Graduate Specialist (Chair of Design) from the Fine Arts Institute, Bucharest, Romania.

  As a student under Stalin, Bitzan first discerned that transgression was impossible. He remembered the painful "unmasking" (his term) during which students denounced each other and their professors, denunciations accompanied by obligatory applause, the same obligatory applause required at the very mention of Stalin's name. His terror was so deep, he remembered, that he felt "guilty for being human," and was afraid of "being an enemy of the party, an enemy of the State, an enemy of the Soviet Union."

In 1964, one of Bitzan's paintings was selected for inclusion in the Venice Biennale. A social realist work of "a Lorie filled with wheat, a field worker, and a red flag in the corner," the socialist subject and style, like the applause, was mandated. But Bitzan felt his work was "perfect" because he had composed it precisely according to the rules for the golden Section. When he travelled to Venice to attend the Biennale, however, he saw the assemblages and collages of Robert Rauschenberg, the American artist who received first prize at the Biennale that year. Bitzan returned to Romania confused, disturbed, and embarrassed by his art. He felt himself to be a provincial outsider and was humiliated by the very painting of which he had been so proud. Three years later, Bitzan also began to make collages, constructions, and to fabricate hand-made papers on which he wrote his indecipherable language, texts that offer a visual microcosm of the conflict that characterized Romanian artist's conduct, their need to invent alternative languages and to make public something of the content of hidden lives.

Most of these works remained in his studio. Mikhail Bakhtin, a victim of Stalin's despotism, might have compared Bitzan's textual and visual narratives to the heteroglossia of the oppressed who long to speak for themselves. For he observed that all social life is an ongoing struggle between the attempt of power to impose a uniform language and the attempt of those below to speak in their own dialects. In public, Bitzan continued to paint in a socialist realist style. Like many Romanian artists, he capitulated to Ceausescu's frequent requests to paint Him or Her- the terms Romanians used for Nicolae and Elena. For his compliance, Bitzan earned money, prestige in the Art Academy, and the right to travel. He "sold" himself, he insisted, "but only for an hour or so a day when I worked on their pictures." After that he turned the canvases of Him or Her - emblems of his repression - to the wall and began his secret life. In telling this story for the first time, in his own words, Bitzan became "ashamed" and left the room. I too felt shame that the interrogative format of the interview had perpetrated the persecuting question from which I had been sheltered.

Kristine Stiles
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina