"I spend a lot of time choosing pieces for my collages. The work of art has to have its own life, and to recreate pleasure and something else at different levels. They should make a viewer sensitive to what is old and resonant in current culture. I use these parts of my work to sensitize a viewer worn out by a high-speed life and to remind him of this reach of culture."

Ion Bitzan  in an interview with Sean McCrum at The Arts Council of Northern Ireland's Gallery, Belfast, June, 1985

Like other Romanian artists, Bitzan also saw his work as existing in a wider background of twentieth century culture, which could expand the range of possibilities open to him. In this context, Bitzan's fascination with the painter Giorgio Morandi and the writer Jorge Luis Borges is important. "I have two volumes of Morandi's prints in my study. The motifs of light in his work are what sum it up. I'm very fond of what Morandi did. His shapes recur in what I make. For me, it's like taking objects of his out of a drawer and relocating them in my own work. My Morandi - based pieces (cones and other geometrically-shaped objects in groups) related to Borges' eightieth birthday. Borges' writing preoccupies and sustains me, because he keeps talking about never-ending lines of books, or never-ending book. In one of his books, a child finds objects shaped like a little metal cone. I used this motif placed on a book which I made. The cone is very small, heavy. I think of this piece, cone and book, in its relation to science, discoveries, the perpetual dialogue between past and present."

Ion Bitzan  in an interview with Sean McCrum at The Arts Council of Northern Ireland's Gallery, Belfast, June, 1985

What Ion Bitzan wants to convey to us in his infinetely varied creation, is the wonder that we should experience.

Dan Haulica

Honorary President of the International Association of Art Critics

Bitzan paints spaces of calm and strata of epochs. Representations of medieval books, calf-bound or between covers of unexpected material, lure us to reaches of mysterious thought and extravagant learning; we feel as awed and open to the richness of man's mind as we would among the manuscripts stored in a Gothic abbey.

Marin Sorescu

Bitzan fixes in his "fictions" our moment of grace when the book, the library and the reader fuse, to become book-library-reader. We should tread softly, for we are stepping into magic space.

Marin Sorescu

"My work is like a curtain drawn over a window, beyond which are my feelings. The curtain is the unintelligible writing. I'm attempting to catch at a dream state of mind, to convey poetical meaning. The crafting of the work is needed to make a viewer take these trips via history and general culture. A work of art has to be visually pleasing in this context - that's why I use Japanese paper."

Ion Bitzan  in an interview with Sean McCrum at The Arts Council of Northern Ireland's Gallery, Belfast, June, 1985