Nicolás Leiva American, b. 1958

Nicolas Leiva is renowned for his exuberant sculptures and paintings that capture a staggering range of expressive personal vision. But he is best known for his phantasmagorical ceramic creations. Vessels, boats, abstract forms, flying carriages and human heads are transformed to ceramics in an explosion of lush primary colors embossed with silver and gold. Animal and vegetable commingle in a garden of flowers amidst otherworldly human heads, places of shelter are replicated as box-like reliquaries, and plate-like medallions in miniature close up show territories transitioned from his works on paper. Like a Klein bottle or a Möbius strip, his imaginative world unfolds before us in infinite realms. Highly gestural, organic or geometric, Leiva presents a host of archetypes in his emblems of flight, safety and delight.

Born in 1958, in Tucumán, in northwest Argentina, Leiva graduated from the Fine Arts School of the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. He continued his studies in Buenos Aires and moved to Miami in 1990. In 1996, he extended his practice to sculpture and ceramic. He lives part-time in Faenza, Italy, where he works with a variety of materials at the workshops of Bottega Gatti. He has had many important solo and group exhibition in the US and internationally and his works are in the permanent collections of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA); The Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; the Berardo Collection in Lisbon, Portugal; the Gollinelli Collection in Bologna, Italy and the collection of the Museum of Art of Fort Lauderdale in Florida.