A Doctor at the Academy of Fine Arts since 1995, Ivan Ivanov is a member of the closed society of enlightened artists called Anachronists, established in Italy in 1980.

Looking at Ivan Ivanov's paintings makes you fall into a reverie. They resemble a nightmare, suddenly relieved by the joyous moment of awakening. Unearthly sylphs, liberated from the burden of their clothes, float freely in the fantasy-weakened gravitation of a dream world. Their bodies entwine, albeit never coming into contact. This chaotic intercourse is organized with mathematical precision into elaborate patterns of bodily vignettes and carnal ornaments. No clothes dare hide the angelic beauty of these creatures with arms like creeping plants and hands tipped with menacingly glowing claws; sometimes, a bird's tail would adorn a body; or, a woman's head of breathtaking beauty would crown the tense and powerful body of a strange mythical beast. A weird metamorphosis is under way.

These slender female bodies are in fact frozen figurations, reminiscent of their pre-human existence. They entice and scare with a mixture of horror and yearning. The eruption of eroticism is a clear reminder of the destructive force of the spasms of pleasure. The orgiastic compositions merely conceal the fear of death under the cover of hedonism-just like a skull grinning under a carnival hat in a medieval mystery play. The naked female body "a strange configuration of other natural forms" represents an instrument of pleasure and torture as well, a sophisticated inquisitional tool.

Sheer sensuality and an erotic nightmare, magical transformation of reality and its sudden rejection in the name of phantasms, angelic fumes from the adept's alembic: Ivan Ivanov's paintings are an alchemic product of phosphorus, azure, and gold. Their colors torture our memory-Haven't we seen them with the Old Masters?-that green resembling anger, or perhaps blood dried up centuries ago; that red, almost the color of the philosopher's stone or maybe little red-headed girl's urine taken at the hour of sunset; that golden, not even a color but pure radiance emanating mystically from the darkness. The alchemy of color has extracted from the voluptuously entwined bodies a certain "golden quality." Colors, as if dematerialized, merge into beams of glaring light. Tormented by sin and fears, guilt and pleasure, purified through the transmutations of the natural forms, the bodies have gradually turned into solid gold.

Ivan Ivanov's art works are in the private collections of The Dalai Lama; the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair; and the Royal families in Spain, Sweden, Monaco, and Portugal. His works are also part of private collections in Italy, Germany, France, Japan, Great Britain, USA, Israel, and in the collection of Municipality of Saint Ouen Paris. Oscar-winning Hollywood directors and actors are also among the collectors of Ivan Ivanov's art works.