CLAY IV Painting

Nistka was born in Italy. He started painting very early on, he recalls: "I remember my first watercolor being a Harlequin dressed in different shades of ochre, it was my first sale to a private collector, I think I was ten. I believe the piece is still somewhere in Rome." Nistka first artistic influences were Matisse and Picasso, "both inescapable when you are born in the second half of the 20th century" he says. He also adds to those, a mix array of artists such as Renato Guttuso, Jackson Pollock, Giacometti, De Chirico, Pasolini, and Fellini..."movies were a lot like paintings back then." He traveled and lived through Europe as well as South and Central America during his teenage years absorbing language and culture. Became enamored with the poetry of Lorca and Neruda and started writing his own verses and poetry, merging eventually the two art forms; trying to create images through the verses and imparting lyricism through his paintings. He affirms "I believe that a work of art has to elicit an emotive response and establish a connection between the viewer or the reader and the artist. We need to know that we are not alone or singular for that matter in the way we feel." Nistka arrived in the USA as a young man and after finishing high school, and shortly after attending the School of Liberal Arts at Boston University, he decided to go back and finish his studies in Europe. Found himself in Italy. He recalls: "it was the decade of excess, and even though I had enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, I was drawn towards the political unrest of the times, and tried to bring my voice to it" In 1981 he helped create a private radio station at a time when media was mostly under government control. He states: "The art for me was in the living: the creation of impromptu happenings, whether that be disrupting the night of a city center plagued by daily homicides to give a concert at midnight or dance raves in remote locations or even taking over the presses of a newspaper to printing something completely unexpected. On his return to the US Nistka was disheartened by the state of things in general. He says: "I tried to understand the American pragmatic hedonism of the era to no avail, a bohemian and an artist, and one who gave money little importance, Nistka took refuge in the desert and started painting again and working with ceramics.