He is among the few sculptors who have added a new execution technique to those that already exist: sand-casting, with which he performs his most demanding works starting in the 1950s. It is a relief obtained with a simple procedure: the shape is shaped negatively on the sand; a cast of plaster or cement is poured onto it, which when dried gives life to the definitive relief.

Born in Orani in 1911, the sixth of ten children, Nivola experienced in his childhood the difficult life of a poor family in rural Sardinia in the early twentieth century.

From a young age, in 1926, he was hired as an apprentice by the painter Mario Delitala for the decoration of the Aula Magna of the University of Sassari. The departure from his native country is a traumatic event that, taking him away from the community, makes him feel uprooted: it is only the first of a series of detachments destined to mark the phases of his existential and artistic history.

At the end of 1931, thanks to a grant from the Nuoro Economic Council, he moved to Monza to attend the Higher Institute for Artistic Industries (ISIA). Here he enrolled in the Pictorial Decoration section and then in that of Advertising Graphics, he met two other Sardinian fellows, Giovanni Pintori and Salvatore Fancello, to whom he was joined by a close friendship.

Despite the perceived lack of theoretical basis in teaching, the years spent at ISIA are fundamental for his training: the multiplication of figurative stimuli, the contact with high-profile teachers (the architects Edoardo Persico and Giuseppe Pagano, the graphic designer Marcello Nizzoli but also the painter Pio Semeghini, and the sculptor Arturo Martini) and the proximity to a fervent environment like the Milanese one contribute to accelerating the pace of his stylistic research and led him to confront the question, destined to become a priority for him, of art applied to architecture.

In 1936 he joined Olivetti in Milan as a draftsman thanks to Ruth Guggenheim, a young German Jew who took refuge in Italy to escape the Nazis. Initially joining the Development and Advertising Department, he was soon assigned to the creation of advertising campaigns and installations and in 1937 he became the artistic director of the company. This moment of intense activity and intellectual exchange is abruptly interrupted. Some time ago, his positions towards the regime became more critical and in 1938 events precipitated: faced with the threat of racial laws, he married Ruth and went with her to Paris and from here he left for the United States. The

clear image of Orani, the village of memory, is matched by the visual density of the paintings and drawings that portray New York. Through them, the artist tries to penetrate the heart of a city that he still feels foreign. In 1948, along with other artists of his friends, he bought a house in Springs, near East Hampton. The garden, created together with architect Bernard Rudofsky, will become a unique work of environmental art, with a series of open-air rooms and walls adorned with graffiti and a solarium with cubist decorations.

Nivola is among the few sculptors who have added a new execution technique to those that already exist: this is sand-casting, with which he performs his most demanding works starting in the 1950s. Sand-casting is a type of relief obtained with a rather simple procedure: the shape is shaped negatively on the sand; then a cast of plaster (in small models and sculptures) or cement (in larger works) is poured onto it, which dries up to create the definitive relief. This can be enriched by the color added to the dough. Subsequently, Nivola perfected the procedure, adapting it to the execution of great monumental works.

Costantino Nivola's work affirms a dilated and centerless concept of space, spread mostly horizontally: a spatiality associated with decoration, with its docility towards the form it takes, in contrast to the autonomy of vertical and isolated sculpture. The anthropological heritage of Sardinia was the starting point for her search for a sculpture understood as choral, communicative art, linked to architecture and focused on the theme of an archetypical femininity, identified with Nature.

In addition to numerous initiatives in the artistic field, he teaches at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University (1973-75) and at the University of Berkeley (1978-80). He died on Long Island on May 5, 1988.

MONOGRAPHS
G. Altea, Costantino Nivola. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2005 ((I maestri dell'arte sarda; 14)