Mr Fijodor is Fijodor Benzo’s pseudonym. Born in Imperia in 1979, he has been creating graffiti and drawings for over 15 years. He studied Fine Art at Cuneo (Italy) and Valencia (Spain) and has been living in Turin since 2004. He has been trying to find a suitable tag like other graffiti writers for years, but in the end realised he was happy to stick with his birth name.
As a child creativity was already running through his veins as he organised exhibitions using LEGO bricks and drew on the walls of his room. His recent work is characterised by great variety: installations and themed murals to performance art and graffiti, which he has been practising since 1994. The subjects of his work are created using basic shapes that act as a vehicle for direct and ironically responsible messages; the messages are simple so they can be easily interpreted by and communicated to the spectator. His work often offers a critique of social or ecological issues and uses the astonished smile of a child as a weapon in place of technical research.
Mr Fijodor is a member of the cultural association Il Cerchio e Le Gocce. He has created various large-scale murals with the organisation, the most significant of which “Culture colors your life” (2010) covers the blank façade of the University of Turin’s Palazzo Nuovo.