Richard Bilan

Richard Bilan was born in Poland in 1946 to Holocaust survivors. His father died at a young age and his mother was frequently hospitalized in psychiatric institutions. Bilan spent his childhood homeless, wandering the streets of Poland, befriending Romani, vagabonds and circus performers, who would later become an integral part of his work. after some years he was captured and placed in an orphanage.
In 1969, he immigrated to Israel by himself and settled in Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, joined the army and later completed his art studies at Bezalel. According to him, the greatest influence on his life was his teacher, the engraver Yaakov Pines.
After his studies at Bezalel, Bilan won an honors scholarship and came to Paris to continue his studies at the National School. After a few years, he settled in Paris with his new family.
Richard Bilan has lived and created for forty years between France, Poland and Israel.

Bilan is a storyteller. In his paintings, he moves between formal compositions and colorful figures. He creates complex scenes in which high-rise buildings form a backdrop for gracefully moving figures – clowns, dancers, and runners, combining a wide palette of hues and colors in a celebration of abstraction and expressiveness on canvas and board.

“‘Grotesque’ is a suitable term for describing Bilan’s works, Not ‘grotesque’ in the current fashionable meaning, but grotesque in its opposite meaning – an existential anxiety demonstrated by comic and bizarre gestures. Images of horror and fear are known in art history – Munch’s The Scream, Picasso’s Guernica, and Francis Bacon’s portrait of the Pope ..looking at the entire series of works enhances the sense of the grotesque parody emerging from each one of them… covering it by a layer of irony and humor that makes it just as tragic as a tragedy declared overtly.” – Yoantan Amir