Fernando Naviskas

Painter

Life Events

Fernando Naviskas’s Biography  2022

FANAVISKAS: Is how Fernando Antonio Naviskas, signs his artwork! The artist was born on August 2, 1961, in the city of Barretos, in the interior of São Paulo.

Naviskas was always involved with the arts, since childhood, his main occupation was drawing. When very young, during the 70s, he used to write comic books, using Indian ink and pastel chalk in his first compositions; and experimented with carving in wood. Developing a taste for technical design, he even created logos for companies; and encouraged by his father, he also became  interested in photography.

At the age of 20, he studied painting at the University  of Fine Arts of São Paulo, then located in the Luz district, opposite the old train station, a place deeply registered in his memory and portrayed by him on several occasions – from there the trains departed for the long journeys to Barretos , and it is from there, his hometown, that he carries the happy childhood memories of the holidays spent and revisited often in the bucolic spirit of his landscapes.

In 1985 he studied Art Education at Faculdade Marcelo Tupinambá.

Third of the four children of Pedro Naviskas (in memorian) and Maria Abdala Tomé Naviskas, is the grandson of Lithuanians and Lebanese, Fernando is passionate about visual arts and music, having been tenor in several choirs; he studied drums and still works in musical groups as a vocalist. Music is also a theme frequently visited in his work.

He addresses other diverse themes, such urban sceneries from São Paulo, the city where he lives and from many other cities he has visited around the world. Not infrequently, the strong connection with psychology brings a myriad of dreamlike, symbolic themes to his canvases. In 1981, he became acquainted with Candomblé, one of the richest Afro-Brazilian cultures, and the orixás gained a portion of his work.

Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, Benedito Calixto, Gregório Gruber, Portinari, Rembrandt, are some of the artists he admires.

Naviskas’ first exhibition took place in 1984, at a group show that brought together fellow graduates of the University of Fine Arts of São Paulo. Since then he has  exhibited in Brazil and around the world, including France, United States, Portugal, Germany, Japan, Serbia, Ukraine. He joined the French group “Structurellistes” in 2012 exhibiting at the Salon Art in Capital at the Grand Palais, Paris. It is part of a series of group shows in Germany and biennials in Japan and Portugal. In 2014 he traveled to Eastern Europe exhibiting in Belgrade, Serbia. He also had an individual in Scarsdale – NY in the same year.

Contemporary in its unique way, Naviskas entertains and  appreciates flirtatious labels with diverse artistic expressions from cartoons to classical painting, but Impressionism is the school that exerts the most influence on him due to the superb quality of light. He seeks in each work a unique expression of intense vibration and energy, whatever the theme addressed. A large number of works today are book covers, records and posters and the artist has collectors throughout Brazil and in many countries on different continents.