Adrian Nivola tackles a variety of themes in his imagery, working from memory and driven by an effort to convey an enduring quality of light in ephemeral scenes. Among his subjects are women and children as well as landscapes of England, southern France and Italy. A simultaneous engagement in multiple mediums and techniques suits Nivola who works extensively not only in oil paint and soft pastel but also with the sculptural materials of wire, wood and fabric. His artistic formation was encouraged at a young age by his grandfather, the Sardinian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola who was celebrated for his large-scale sandcast murals and also by his grandmother Ruth Guggenheim Nivola who created jewelry from silk and metal thread. The artist’s recent work was influenced by the legacy of the Nabis painters Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard as well as the landscape painter Albert Marquet. Nivola earned a master’s degree at the New York Studio School in 2008 after graduating with a BFA with distinction in painting from Yale.
Adrian Nivola
A sculptor and painter, Adrian Nivola tackles a variety of themes, working from memory and driven by an effort to convey an enduring quality of light in ephemeral scenes. Seeking to transform color into light, in some works Nivola portrays the atmosphere of interiors where figures reside in solitude, part and parcel of the light they radiate. Similarly quiet, in delicately layered pastel landscapes Nivola articulates the vast, lambent expanse of valleys in Idaho, where the sublime scale of the Western American landscape becomes a foil for the sparse and unlikely structures of its inhabitants. The ephemeral light on the jerseys of horse jockeys which he studies at the Belmont Racetrack similarly engages Nivola’s eye and hand. The sumptuous palette and accent on costume recalls Degas’s pastels of the races. The resulting work, in paint and pastel, captures moments that feel resplendently timeless. With a lush impasto technique, his delicate dabs of pigment are tactile and luminous.
Nivola also explores the absurd disparity between aspirations and limitations within his artworks. From whimsical sculptures of unplayable musical instruments to the soft light encapsulated in his oil paintings and pastels, each of Nivola’s compositions express the beauty intrinsic to design that is separate from function. His work captivates the viewer, evoking reflection on the fickle relationship between the purpose of an object and its aesthetic value. From his paintings of carefully observed dead birds with one or more of their wings extended as if still capable of flight to his sculptures of unplayable musical instruments with their refined aesthetic machinery that fails to produce a sound, Nivola’s subjects often appear to have veered off course from fulfilling the function they promise. And yet their beauty, Nivola’s work suggests, may be in the detour.