Leonardo Pellicanò

Lives and works in Paris, France

Artist statement

“Pellicanò’s intricate works in oil on wood set deeply human scenes of tension, displacement, and collective movement within dreamlike and fractured landscapes. His concern with collective experience becomes palpable through a visual language that confronts crisis with tenderness and poetic restraint. The “other-worldliness” of his paintings appears as a natural response to global instability, where traces of art history, mythology, and the fantastic intersect within theatrical and carefully constructed visual worlds.” -LILLIAN DAVIES, 2025 Leonardo Pellicanò’s painting practice unfolds in visual worlds that feel perpetually on the edge—suspended between collapse and transformation, myth and memory. Drawing from medieval symbolism, pagan imagery, and fragments of art history, his works construct scenes where hybrid figures drift through atmospheres thick with ambiguity. These are not fixed narratives but fragmentary, dreamlike spaces where imagery dissolves into gesture and surface. The tension within the paintings mirrors a broader cultural unease. Everything appears caught mid-collapse: characters, structures, even the act of representation itself. This instability is not merely an aesthetic choice, but a structural one. The paintings read like psychological landscapes shaped by crisis—personal, social, and environmental. Forms emerge and disappear within apocalyptic terrains, obscured by iridescent miasma and colorful winds. Raw supports like jute and wood absorb...

Artwork