ART CITIES: Madrid-Robert Nava

Driven by his desire to “make new myths” responsive to our times, Robert Nava has created a chimerical world of metamorphic creatures, drawing inspiration from sources as disparate as prehistoric cave paintings, Egyptian art, and cartoons. Rendered through a raw, energetic mixing of spray paint, acrylics, and grease pencil, his large-scale paintings of fantastical beasts exude a playful candidness that defies the pretensions of high art and invites viewers to reconnect with the unbridled imagination of their childhoods.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza Archive

The works in Robert Nava’s first solo Museum exhibition in Spain date from the artist’s most recent period, between 2019 and 2024, during which his painting has become more complex, pictorial and dynamic. It features 17 large-format works, including “Castle Back Flyer” (2021) and “Red River Storm” (2023), both from Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisz’s collection. The works reveal Nava’s typical energy and convey his almost child-like capacity for fantasy and creativity, encouraging the viewer to reflect on loss of innocence and its rediscovery. From an early age, Robert Nava was interested and began to paint in an academic style. In 2008 he graduated from Indiana University Northwest with a degree in Fine Arts, and in 2011 obtained a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale. Today his work is represented in the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Art Institute de Chicago, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Zuzeum Art Center in Riga. Robert Nava’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in cities such as London, New York and Seoul. Nava’s style reflects an intention to “unlearn” and to move away from the rules and conventions acquired during his training. Consequently, he is frequently associated with so-called “bad painting”, a term coined in 1978 by Marcia Tucker, founding curator of the New Museum in New York, to define works that challenge the classical canons of good taste.  Pre-historic and Egyptian art, Pre-Columbian culture, cartoons and the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cy Twombly are among the references which Nava has turned to in the construction of his own pictorial language.  The artist’s canvases are filled with mythological, zoomorphic creatures that inhabit tense, violent spaces, giving rise to cryptic scenes in which there is no narrative, just action. Sharks with gaping mouths, blood-covered alligators, dragons, winged angels and other hybrid monsters are among the creatures that configure Nava’s iconography. The forms are schematic and flat, with no sensation of depth, almost as if executed by a child with no knowledge of perspective. Robert Nava’s notebooks are fundamental to his creative process and he draws in them as an exercise for recording ideas. Subsequently many of these drawings are translated onto his canvases, adapting them with regard to technique and proportions. The themes and motifs are transferred to his large-format paintings through the use of spray paint, acrylic paint and oil sticks, materials which allow him to work rapidly.

Photo: Robert Nava, Between Beasts We Understand, 2023, Acrylic and grease pencil on canvas. 265,4 x 495,3 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery, Nueva York. © Robert Nava, courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo: Giorgio Benni, courtesy Pace Gallery

Info: Curator: Guillermo Solana, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado 8, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 11/5-22/9/2024, Days & Hours: Mon 12:00-18:00, Tue-Sun 10:00-19:00, www.museothyssen.org/en