 During those years Devalle painted on big-scale canvases choosing his subjects amongst iconic figures taken from contemporary history, such as Ayatollah Khomeini and the writer Salman Rushdie (in the Solo Exhibition at the Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan 1992), and events from crime news, such as the murder of the tourist Barbara Meller in Miami ("A Tourist Trap", edited by Marco Rosci, with text by Giulio Palmieri, Edizioni Charta, 1994; in his solo exhibition at the "Circolo degli Artisti", Turin 1995, edited by Marco Rosci).The solo exhibition of 1996, "Nomi Blasfemi", edited by Maria Mimita Lamberti and presented at the Palazzo Massari in Ferrara and curated by Maria Mimita Lamberti, showed collages and paintings that represented some topical characters through holy texts and pictorial tradition.In 1997 Devalle left the Chair of Painting at the Brera Academy and moved to New York, for the first of a long series of journeys to the United States.