Ionel Talpazan

Ionel Talpazan was born in Romania in 1955, the only survivor of premature twins. His parents were not married and his paternal grandparents raised him until he was six, when they gave him up for adoption. His foster parents beat him regularly. After one such beating, he ran away from home. Hiding outside overnight, he saw a "blue energy" that he later came to believe was from a UFO. He began to draw UFOs obsessively. Talpazan and a friend made a nighttime escape from Communist Romania in March 1987, swimming across the Danube to Yugoslavia, where he was imprisoned as an illegal alien. He was later recognized as a political refugee and immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. Working as a manual laborer, he began obsessively creating UFOs, in pen, paint, and concrete, like the 1,000-pound UFO that was bowing the floor of his New York City apartment, and now resides in AVAM's Permanent Collection. Talpazan believed his works possess a scientific, as well as, artistic value. His ultimate goal was to reveal to the world the mysterious technology and hidden meaning of UFOs. On taking American Citizenship, Talpazan legally changed his name to Adrian DaVinci. On September 21, 2015, Ionel Talpazan died at the age of 60.

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