Seraphim and Clouds, 2020
Acrylic and grease pencil on canvas
85 × 73 inches (215.9 cm × 185.4 cm)
© Robert Nava. Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery
An emerging star on the international art scene, Robert Nava was born in 1985 in East Chicago, where he first started drawing characters from cartoons and cereal boxes as a child. After art studies in Indiana and grad school at Yale, Nava embraced the role of struggling young artist in New York, where he returned to an expressive, childlike style of creating fine art.
Capturing the greater art world’s attention in a three-person presentation at Expo Chicago in 2017, Nava has since gone on to successful solo shows in Brussels, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, and Palm Beach. Fresh off the Palm Beach outing, where he showed dynamic canvases of monstrous sharks at Pace, the talented artist sat down with Art & Object to discuss the arc of his rise, his work process, and an innovative series of spirited angel paintings, currently on view at the new Chelsea locale of the Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York.