Born in Chile in 1941, Gustavo Novoa made his debut as an artist in the early 1960s selling watercolors and works in crayon on the streets of Paris, principally Montmartre. His first one-man show was sponsored by the Chilean Ambassador at the Maison de L’Amerique Latin in 1961. The late Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain sponsored his second show in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1962. By 1965, he had become an adopted “New Yorker.” Like many others, he admits to having been lured by the American dream.

A successful partnership with Guy Burgos and, later, Lady Sarah Churchill led to the opening of the Burgos Gallery on Manhattan’s East Side in 1965. Novoa’s style had evolved into textured oils. By the late sixties, however, his subjects had changed into the gentle jungle denizens that were to be his trademark.

“Bonds with reality are very hard to shake once you establish them.”

With this premise in mind, Novoa constructed a dream-like new jungle where the lion lies down with the zebra. Panthers and pandas share the shade with African monkeys and American raccoons. The radiant colors of Novoa’s luxuriant foliage seem to wield a mystical power of bringing together predator and prey, the meek and the strong.

Gustavo Novoa continues to re-invent his menagerie in ways that both surprise and delight. From his black and white visions of his natural utopias, to the colorful opt-art compositions and everything in between, Novoa’s sense of color, his precise craftsmanship and his penchant for imbuing his animals with a sense of self, continues to capture the hearts of art lovers and collectors from many different generations and from all over the world. Findlay Galleries has exclusively represented Gustavo Novoa since 1971.