The cultural world of Neuchâtel is in mourning. The painter and sculptor Ivan Moscatelli left us at the end of last week, announces the family of the artist. He was 78 years old and was suffering in his health.
“After a long life rich in colors and emotions, his heart stopped, serenely and surrounded by love”, can we read in the announcement published this Monday, August 8 in the paper version of ArcInfo. According to the wishes of the deceased, the farewell ceremony took place in private.
A sequined coffin
Death, Ivan Moscatelli did not flee it. He was familiar with her and looked her in the eye. By provocation, but also by conviction.
In the large portrait that we dedicated to him in October 2018, he presented to us, in his studio in Wavre, the coffin given to him by a friend, dazzling like the blue of the Mediterranean, sparkling with rhinestones and sequins, joyfully cynical and provocative.
Death is not sad! It is the apotheosis of life.
Ivan Moscatelli, in the large portrait that we devoted to him in 2018
“A magnificent proof of friendship”, he said then, the eternal optimist. “Death is not sad! It is the apotheosis of life. This coffin serves to exorcise the negative image we have of mourning. I don’t want to go to bed for the last time in the dark.”
Words like an epitaph
On August 3, Ivan Moscatelli posted a black and white portrait of himself on his Facebook account, with this little sentence written in a comic bubble: “Death only exists for people who are afraid of it.”
Words that, today, resonate like an epitaph.
