GLOBAL COLLECTORS ART PRIZE | MASTERS DEFINING THE FUTURE OF ART

Biography

Letterio Scopelliti was born in Messina but soon moved to Florence, where he attended university and graduated in Philosophy. He taught Philosophy and History in secondary schools for thirty years.

Always passionate about art and photography, in 2007 he participated in group exhibitions at the Strozzina in Florence and presented a solo exhibition at Caffè Principe dedicated to Venetian masks. In 2014 and 2019, he was included in the Fotografi in Toscana series curated by Fabrizio Borghini.

From 2023 to 2026, he participated in group art exhibitions in galleries in Florence, Bologna, Milan, Venice, Turin, Catania, Lecce, London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, and Barcelona.

In 2025, he participated in the XV Florence Biennale with four works.

Letterio Scopelliti’s photographic practice occupies a fertile borderland where the image ceases to be a mere record of reality and becomes a painterly surface, a field of colour, and a sensory experience.

Born in Messina and shaped by a continuous geographical and cultural journey that has ultimately led him to live in Florence, Letterio brings to his work the unmistakable imprint of travel, not only as physical movement but as a way of seeing.

His numerous international exhibitions testify to an already mature artistic practice, capable of engaging with different audiences and contexts without losing its artistic coherence.

Two elements form the foundations of his photographic practice: a conscious interaction with painting and a genuine devotion to colour. His photographs do not simply represent places; they transform and reinvent them, bringing them into an emotional dimension.

In this sense, Letterio seems to embrace Paul Cézanne’s statement: “Painting is not copying nature, but expressing it.” This is precisely what happens in his photographs: reality is filtered through a chromatic sensitivity that amplifies its inner resonances.

In this continuous movement between landscape, abstraction, and pictorialism, Letterio may be associated with Saul Leiter and Luigi Ghirri for his bold use of colour as a structural element of the image and for his ability to reduce the world to emotional fields of colour.

At the same time, his sensitivity to the material qualities of light brings him close to the Impressionist tradition, while maintaining a strongly contemporary and personal artistic language.

As Wassily Kandinsky wrote: “Colour is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul.” Letterio appears to move precisely in this direction: his photographs ask not only to be seen, but to be felt.

Each work becomes a visual threshold that invites the viewer to enter a universe where photography becomes painting, landscape becomes a state of mind, and colour transforms into the primary language of experience.

Ultimately, his is an art that celebrates the metamorphosis of reality, returning to the world a new and intensely poetic vibration.

Instagram: @letterio_scopelliti