Costantino Nivola was born in Nuoro, Sardinia in 1911. After graduating from the Istituto Superiore Industrie Artistiche in Monza and working as art director for Olivetti in Milan, Nivola moved to New York in 1939. He became part of the postwar American art scene, formed friendships with de Kooning, Kline, Vicente, Sterne, Léger, Calder, and Steinberg, as well as Le Corbusier, with whom he developed a lasting collaboration. He was involved in the activities of The Club alongside Pavia, Motherwell, de Kooning, Noguchi, Spaventa, and Leo Castelli, and participated in the influential 9th Street Art Exhibition in 1951. He contributed to the magazine It Is. A Magazine for Abstract Art, founded and directed by Philip Pavia. His first sculpture exhibition took place in 1950 at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. He created large sand-cast bas-reliefs, including the Olivetti showroom mural in New York (1954) and the Hartford Insurance Company façade in Connecticut (1957–58). Despite his long residence in America, he remained connected to Italy through projects like the renovation of Piazza Sebastiano Satta in Nuoro, the graffito and fresco façade of the Sa Itria Church in Orani, and exhibitions at Galleria del Milione (1959) and Galleria dell’Ariete (1962) in Milan. His work reflects themes of daily life and leisure, the circular nature of life, and Sardinian identity, with series such as Madri, Vedove, and Sardinian Workers. For Nivola, sculpture was inseparable from nature and light.
