Cesare Oliva – artist born in Cesa near Naples on July 29th, 1953. His prolific work of art is the result of a variety of human experiences, travel and extended stays in countries different from one another, of mixed cultures and backgrounds. Oliva has a capacity of expression that amalgamates all the currents that have marked his path, together with a careful analysis of the masters and constant self-taught studies.
Oliva is an observer of science and of philosophical and humanistic subjects that he considers of paramount importance for art. The artist is a tireless researcher, of alternative analysis of space and the reality that are able to integrate the most relevant, concepts and discoveries of our time. Not to mention the possibility of finding ways abandoned in the past, because virtuous art arises from the plurality of profound knowledge, from overcoming the conventional thinking and a constructive breaking of the conceptual limits of our minds.
In fact, among his many periods and researches you can see the Hypercubism: the perspective applied to Hypercubic bodies to overcome the two-dimensional narrative and Reflectionism: the analysis of reality and thought to avoid that thought gets stuck into a single mental process. With this Oliva wants to prove that the so-called creative processes are still at the Paleolithic stage and have not really evolved since.
The artist leaves in early childhood his hometown in the province of Naples in a period of post-war. He never really completely leaves Italy going back and forth in long transatlantic trips for holidays and stays that include a part of his education. Thanks to an entrepreneur grandfather, at only two years old, he is catapulted into the new world of exotic and shocking diversity: a lush Venezuela.
Years later he moves to the pragmatic and industrialized North America. In fact, living for some years in Toronto and many others in Montreal. Stays frequently interrupted by trips and stays of varying length in the United States, Venezuela and Italy, his life spread over three continents.
During the 70s he experienced the last echoes of the influence of the golden days of via Margutta in Rome. He there met the art dealer Toni Porcella of Ca’ D’oro art gallery who organized him a solo exhibition. He also met the artist Giorgio De Chirico and the painter Mayo Antoine Malliarakis.
In that same period in New York, at the hotel Saint-Regis, he meets Salvador Dali. In the late 70’s he wins two first prizes in painting.
Oliva’s surrealistic side descendant from the original surrealism, which is not the postmodern mannerism that quotes original aesthetics that have lost their initial linguistic meaning.
He believes surrealism is a way of living and perceiving life and not a particular aesthetic system of connoted forms.
In the late 80’s and 90’s he is promoted by an agent in Canada.
He has exhibited in Caracas, Rome, Montreal, Toronto and New York, Florence, Portugal, London.
In 1996, the last return to Italy, Florence (prophesied in his painting “The Return”, 1972), a strongly desired return but to a country that now considers him almost like a stranger, a place where his art seems foreign but he nevertheless continues tirelessly to produce, create and research.
They’ve said of him: “It’s amazing that such inventive imagination, innovative talent and skillful execution can coexist in a single artist. His work is highly descriptive and consistently intriguing … different! “Dorothy Myers Roatz from” About Art “Soho, New York 1994.