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Adrian Nivola
Early Life and Landscapes -
Since the birth of his son two years ago, Adrian Nivola has been captivated by observing the child’s emerging consciousness, and by moments of unlikely serenity in early, sleepless family life: “My child, like all infants, suddenly and mysteriously evolved from a vaguely alert amoeba into a forceful personality, the way a work of art, with any luck, sometimes can. When I look at my son, I am moved above all by the fragility of his trust in me which is, of course, a universal experience for all parents. It seems to me that if I can succeed in capturing something of that expression in him, which has so elevated the stakes of life for me, it might do the same for my audience.”
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Nivola’s work is emphatically small in format yet often monumental in scale. The small format suits his touch with the material of both paint and pastel. It also necessitates close contact with his subjects, rather than requiring the viewer to stand at a distance in order to perceive the whole composition. Nivola works from memory, assisted by drawings and photographs rather than directly from nature. He believes that the process of recollecting his experience helps him to distill what matters visually and emotionally.
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Ruth with LeCorbusier's Mural, 2025Pastel on paper6 1/2 x 7 inches
Framed dimensions 12 x 12 1/2 inches -
Grandmother and Child at Table, 2025Pastel on paper9 x 7 1/4 inches
Framed dimensions 14 3/4 x 13 inches -
Tino and Delphine in Passing, 2025Pastel on paper9 1/2 x 11 inches
Framed dimensions 15 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches
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Strolling in Limbo, 2025Pastel on paper12 x 6 1/2 inches
Framed dimensions 17 x 11 1/2 inches -
"Is That All There Is?", 2025Pastel on paper5 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches
Framed dimensions 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches -
Rascals of the Round Table, 2025Pastel on paper8 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches
Framed dimensions 14 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches
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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.
Early Life and Landscapes: Adrian Nivola
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