Roman Bilinski: a wordly artist in Western Liguria

Roman Bilinski was born in Lviv on July 15, 1897 by Polish nobles and landowners. Among the plants and flowers of a greenhouse nearby, the artist managed to deepen his contact with and knowledge of nature that will prove crucial to his work.

The young artist attended art schools in Lviv, in Krakow, and Kiew. In 1914 Lviv was affected by the war between Russia and Austria. The war troubled so deeply his country that Bilinski decided to reach Constantinople and, in the old Muslim capital of the Empire, he taught painting in the French-American College; he traveled to Turkey and studied the Muslim world. He established as an artist and became a reference point for men of culture there.

The outbreak of World War II surprised the artist and his partner in Yugoslavia where they got arrested by the SS and risked deportation but were saved as Roman was the then-deceased governor Leo Bilinski's grandson. They ended up with the allies in Trieste.

He thus came to Italy with the rank of Polish Red Cross' captain and, after the war, settled temporarily in Camogli.

Keen interpreter of nature, he strived to transform the garden of his villa in Bordighera, where he eventually established, in an exotic jungle. Bilinski, in fact, saw nature as a constant struggle for survival.

He was not influenced by any specific art movement or fashion. His work focuses on portraits and landscapes, expressing his emotional state. Roman Bilinski died on March 26, 1981 of a heart attack.