Background
Albert Bitran was born on December 25, 1931, in Istanbul, Turkey.
Albert Bitran was born on December 25, 1931, in Istanbul, Turkey.
Albert Bitran studied at the Saint-Michel College in Istanbul where he received Bachelor of Arts in Turkish and French. At the age of 17, he came to Paris to study architecture, which he quickly abandoned to devote himself to painting.
During the first solo exhibition of his geometric works in 1951 at the Arnaud gallery, meeting place of the avant-garde of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he was the only 20 years old, and he participated in many events including the first exhibition of abstract art of Caracas and "Divergences" in Paris at the theater of Babylon. In 1954 he exhibited at the Galerie Denise René, with a preface by Henri-Pierre Roché who opened his prestigious collection and rented him a room in Boulevard Arago where he painted.
But, leaving the geometric abstraction, Bitran moved towards the research painting that he would pursue for all his life. In 1958, Albert Bitran got married, took the French nationality, settled on the street of Plantes and in Aube with Rigny-le-Ferron where he had a workshop of ceramics. He also made long stays in Italy where he worked and exhibited. In Paris, it was Jean Pollack who showed his work in many exhibitions at the gallery Ariel 3. In the 1960s, Bitran developed with the drawings, the paper and the oils, the themes of "The Workshop" and "Interior-Exterior." He has also been working since 1962 on engraving and lithography, first with Mourlot then with Bellini and Leblanc.
In 1968 he moved to rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Montparnasse, where he worked and lived until 2000. From 1970, he created the "Doubles", analytical questioning of his painting. In 1973, he created "Sextet", suite of six tables in a closed cycle, exposed according to a plan of Ricardo Porro, in museums in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and Austria. In 1979 and 1980 Bitran directed the seminar of the Salzburg Sommer Academy and Manes Sperber prefaced his exhibition at the Traklhauss.
In the early 1980s, Bitran set up his workshop in the Lot where he worked for many months, experimenting with oil techniques on paper and cardboard. He created "Les Grandes Formmes" that Patrick Bongers chose for his first exhibition of paintings at the Galerie Louis Carré in 1987. Other personal exhibitions of these works were in Switzerland in 1986, Denmark in 1988, Germany in 1990, Japan in 1990, and United States in 1992.
A retrospective was dedicated to him at the Museum of Campredon in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in 1991. Inspired by his childhood memories in Istanbul, and his many travels in Turkey, the "Arcades", paintings and sculptures, were exhibited first in 1997 at the Nev Gallery in Ankara, then in France at Espace Écureuil in Toulouse with a preface by Pierre Daix. In 2000 Bitran left Montparnasse for Montrouge where he built his house and a workshop. After the series on "The Blacks", oils on paper, exhibited in Mexico City in 2008, then in various cultural centers in France, Bitran continued that research on large paintings that he exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 2010 and 2011, at the Tuileries Gallery in Lyon in 2012, and at the cultural center of Mont-de-Marsan in 2013.
Albert married in 1958.
