Ivan Cangelosi (Palermo, September 15, 1968) shows creative liveliness since he was a child. After spending part of his childhood in Turin, he returns to Palermo, his native city. In spite of his innate artistic vocation, the passion for languages (he studied English, German and French) and, later, for social, philosophical and political issues, push him towards humanistic studies, in the completion of which he graduates in Padua in Political Science and International Relations.
The humanistic education, apparently in contradiction with the artistic vocation, will actually be crucial in the process of creation and elaboration of his works, created through a technique which consists in the use of writing and of pens (instead of color and brushes) as tools for creating figurative and abstract art. The works made by this technique are “painted” through a sort of embroidery of letters, those indeed of the texts of some world-famous novels and other literature texts. Due to the use of the above-mentioned technique Ivan Cangelosi’s works remind of the old mediaeval amanuens art (before the spread of printing, the “amanuensis” was the person who, by profession, used to transcribe manuscripts for private clients). For this reason, and due to the merging of two genres such as literature and painting, this works could be defined as “Visual Literature”.