Theo Bitter was a versatile artist. He painted, made watercolours, drawings, stage sets for the Hague Comedy theatre, murals and mosaics. He was also a co-founder and active member of The Hague’s post-war painters’ group Verve and later of Fugare (1960-67), to which the painters Jan van Heel, Willem Hussem and Jaap Nanninga belonged. After training at The Hague Academy of Art, Bitter initially painted in a naïve realist style. After a brief period of abstraction, from the fifties on he turned to painting in a lyrical realist manner.