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Richard Bilan

Ryszard Bilan was born in Kraków in 1946 into an assimilated Jewish craftsmen's family from Stanisławów. As a young man, he was exceptionally tested by life. First, as a result of his experiences during the occupation, his mother is committed to a psychiatric hospital, his father soon dies of tuberculosis, and Bilan is placed in an orphanage after an episode of life on the street, where he experiences hunger and loneliness.

He then moves to the Young Worker's House while attending the Basic Vocational School for the Glass Industry in Szczytna. He passes his final exams at the Glass Industry Technical School, which allows him to be employed in a glassworks. There he works in the sales department and plans his future as an economics student and artist. However, he is soon forced to shelve his plans as a result of the growing anti-Semitic campaign in Poland.

Bilan first experiences anti-Semitism in 1967, after the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Initial allusions to the artist's background turned into regular physical and psychological violence by other workers at the steelworks in 1968. According to his own words: “During that period anyone could have spit in my face, could have snubbed me. I didn't even have this awareness that someone has my back. Nobody had. Not the state, not any religious institution that is called to uphold some kind of morality, some kind of humanity. Back then, with that piece of paper, you could do anything with me. No one would claim me. I wanted to be human, I wanted to be Polish. I was, after all, raised here”. Although he did not want to leave the country - as he said: “You had to be very brave to stay, and you had to be very brave to leave” - Bilan, together with his wife, makes the difficult decision to emigrate to Israel.

In Jerusalem, he studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in the Applied Graphics Department. After graduating, he began his once coveted artistic activity, which he continues to this day, creating in Israel and France. JO

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