Albert Bitran - Lyrical Abstraction

Albert Bitran (1931 in Istanbul, Turkey – 9 November 2018 in Paris, France) was a French painter, engraver and sculptor. Albert Bitran was born in 1931, in a Jewish Sephardic family, in Istanbul, Turkey. After his studies at the French Collège Saint Michel, having both diplomas in French and Turkish, he is admitted in the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, in Paris.
"As a young man of 20, he has his first solo exhibition at the prestigious Galerie Arnaud, where he exhibits his geometrically inspired paintings. In 1954 he exhibits at Galerie Denise René, where he meets writer and patron Henri-Pierre Rochée, who writes the preface for the catalogue. Rochée is deeply engaged in the artistic avant-garde, and quickly takes the young artist under his wing.
By the end of the 1950s Bitran begins to experiment with a more liberated, expressive style, where his art is characterised by the interaction between linear shapes. The works are inspired by lyrical prize and contains architectural elements. He exhibits several times at Galerie Ariel, who’s prominent owner Jean Pollack shows a great interest in abstract painting.Bitran becomes a French citizen in 1958, and creates a printing workshop in Rigny-le-Ferron. Through this he begins to work with various graphic techniques, in particular etching and lithography. Bitran has his first exhibit with Galerie Birch in 1961. This is Bitran’s first show in Scandinavia, of which there are numerous in the following years; 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1974, 1979 and 1983.
Today, his work is represented at leading galleries and museums worldwide."(galeriebirch.com)

Lygia Pape - Neo-Concrete Movement

Lygia Pape (7 April 1927 – 3 May 2004) was a prominent Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, engraver, and filmmaker, who was a key figure in the Concrete movement and a later co-founder of the Neo-Concrete Movement in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s.Along with Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, she was a formative artist in the expansion of contemporary art in Brazil and pushed geometric art to include aspects of interaction and to engage with ethical and political themes.
By the age of 20, Lygia Pape had joined the concrete art movement. The term "concrete art" was coined by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg in 1930.Concrete art intended to defend the objectivity of art though paintings that "have no other significance than [themselves]." It forbade the use of natural forms, lyricism, and sentiment.
After her involvement with the Grupo Frente Concrete artists, Lygia Pape transitioned into the short wave of Neo-Concrete art. In 1959 Pape was a signatory of the Neo-Concrete Manifesto, along with Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica.The Neo-Concretists believed that art represented more than the materials used to create, but that it also transcended these "mechanical relationships".The manifesto claimed that art does not just occupy mechanical space, but it "transcends it to become something new."Neo-Concrete artists aimed to create a new expressive space in which an artwork is a living being to have a relationship with and to experience through the senses. Thus, Neo-Concrete artworks usually required the viewer's active participation. It is through the presence and participation of the viewer that the artwork becomes complete.The Neo-concrete artists did not totally reject Concrete art. Concrete art remained the basis of Neo-concrete art, but it was reformulated. Neo-Concrete artists adapted concrete art's geometric shapes and transformed them into organic three-dimensional objects to be manipulated by participants and to be experienced sensorially. The works intended to counteract the urban alienation created by a modern society and integrate both the intellect and the physical body for meditative experiences.
In explaining her approach, Lygia Pape said:
 "My concern is always invention. I always want to invent a new language that's different for me and for others, too... I want to discover new things. Because, to me, art is a way of knowing the world... to see how the world is... of getting to know the world."
Pape specifically during her Neo-Concrete period was interested in the “proposal to ‘live the body.’”This phrase indicates Pape’s interest in how the physical body acts as our mediator for all sensual experiences. Pape sought to explore this idea of the body’s relation in space by creating multi-sensorial experiences in her artwork.Wikipedia

Olga Blinder

Olga Blinder (1921, Asunción, Paraguay – 19 July 2008) was a Paraguayan painter, engraver and sculptor.Blinder was born in Asunción into a Jewish family.She lived through the Chaco War, World War II, the 1947 Paraguayan Civil War and Paraguay's coup d'états in 1954 and 1989.Blinder was also a licensed professor who has taught arts and creative education for over 30 years. She has also published numerous books and articles on education and art.She began displaying her work in Paraguay in 1950 and began exhibiting abroad in 1953. In 1954 she helped co-found the Grupo Arte Nuevo in Asunción.She is the former director of the Escolinha de Arte of Paraguay in the Brazilian Cultural Mission and of the Instituto de Arte (ISA) of the National University of Asunción. She was also an advisor to the Ministry of Education for the development of textbooks.She has been recognized by the League of Women's Rights, decorated by the Brazilian government, and received the Integración Latinoamericana award from the Ministry of Culture and Education of Argentina.Wikipedia

 

Eco art Frans Krajcberg

"After the outbreak of the Second World War, Krajcberg, who came from a Jewish family, moved to the Soviet-occupied territories. In 1940, he commenced architecture studies in Leningrad. After the German invasion of the USSR, he joined the newly founded Polish Armed Forces in the East, where he was assigned to the sapper brigade. However, when the Polish army marched out, he remained in the Soviet Union. After the war, he learned that his entire family had been killed in a concentration camp, and he decided to not go back to Poland. He was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and continued studying architecture under Willi Baumeister. After graduating in 1948 he moved to Paris, where he stayed for several years. He travelled a lot during that period, for example to Ibiza or Brazil, where he eventually decided to settle.

Between 1948 and 1954, he created his first sculptures and paintings expressing the direct exposure to nature and an attempt to make elements of the natural environment the sole material used in his works. In 1951, he participated in the 1st São Paulo Art Biennial. He moved to the Minas Gerais state in Brazil, to the Pico da Cata Branca cave in the Itabirito region. The locals called him ‘barbudo das pedras’ (the bearded stone man), as he lived an ascetic life in isolation, washing in the nearby river and sculpting in stone. Zé do Mato, the artist's exhibition assistant and technician, reminisces that Krajcberg ‘wanted to run away from humans, he resembled a wounded animal.’ He was saved by Brazilian nature, which ‘smiled at me and never asked where I came from and what my religion was. That is when I discovered life’, the artist confessed in an interview.

He later moved to the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, where he was hired as an engineer at a paper factory, but eventually moved to an isolated location in a forest and started painting (1952-1956). In 1956, he started living in Rio de Janeiro, where he shared a studio with Franz Weissmann (1911-2005), an Austrian artist, one of the major Brazilian sculptors of 20th century, and a student of August Zamoyski. One year later, Krajcberg obtained Brazilian citizenship and received the title of the country's best painter at the São Paulo Biennial. Beginning in the late 1950s, he often travelled to Europe, temporarily living in Paris, as well as Ibiza and Brazil. During that period, he created oil paintings and sculpted, drawing inspiration from Japanese art. In 1959, while in Ibiza, he started creating monochromatic reliefs decorated with natural pigments – Terras craqueladas (Cracked Earth). In 1964, he took part in the Venice Biennale, and afterwards returned permanently to Brazil, where he established an art studio in Cata Blanca and started creating sculptures and other spatial forms. That was when he created his first sculptures out of dead cedar trees. In 1970, he gained international recognition thanks to his sculptures made of charred wood. Krajcberg also started creating a new cycle titled Cutout Shadows, created out of specially trimmed vines.

 Since 1972, he has been living in the south of the state of Bahia, in Nova Viscoça by the Atlantic Ocean, in a tree house suspended seven metres above the ground. It is also the location of his atelier, Sítio Natura. The artist went to Bahia upon an invitation from his dear friend, Zanine Caldas, who helped him build the house. He planted several thousand saplings of trees native to the Atlantic Forest on the grounds surrounding the house. Two pavilions, now housing over three hundred of his artworks, were also raised there. There are plans to create a museum to the artist, who since 1978, besides his artistic career, has also been pursuing an environmentalist path."(Author: Aleksandra Pluta culture.pl )

Hector Julio Paride Bernabo - Carybe

Hector Julio Paride Bernabo - Carybe (Lanús, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, 7 February 1911 – Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 2 October 1997) was a painter, engraver, draughtsman, illustrator, potter, sculptor, mural painter, researcher, historian and journalist. He settled in Brazil and naturalized as a Brazilian.
While living in Rio de Janeiro, he was a scout. There, scouts were nicknamed after types of fish, and he was given the nickname of Carybé (a kind of piranha). So the artist used it as an alias for his Christian name, which was very similar to his brother’s name, who was also an artist.
He produced five thousand pieces of work, including paintings, drawings, sculptures and sketches. He illustrated books by Jorge Amado as well as Gabriel Gárcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was an Obá de Xangô, an honorary position in candomblé. He died of heart failure during a session in a candomblé yard.
Some of Carybé’s work can be found in the Afro-Brazilian Museum of Salvador: 27 panels representing the orixás. of the Bahian candomblé. Each board shows an orixá with his weapons and his animal of worship. They were sculpted on cedar wood, with engravings and scaling of various kinds of material. The work was commissioned by the former Banco da Bahia S.A., now Banco BBM S.A., which installed them in its branch on Avenida Sete de Setembro in 1968.
Carybé produced more than 5,000 works; his art was expressed through paintings, engravings, illustrations, wood carvings, mosaics and murals.Wikipedia