Rosario Oliva
About artist
Rosario Oliva is a visual artist and illustrator born in Naples in 1965—a city that has always been a cradle of beauty, contrast, and vibrant cultural ferment. From an early age, he showed a deep interest in drawing and painting, languages he cultivated with discipline and passion. His artistic training began at the Istituto d’Arte in Naples and continued in Rome, where he specialized in illustration at the IED – Istituto Europeo di Design.
It was in Rome that his professional journey began: Oliva established himself as an illustrator and visual artist, collaborating with major advertising agencies and production companies across Italy and Europe. He created illustrations, storyboards, shooting boards, and animations for high-profile advertising campaigns, working with prestigious brands such as Nissan, Alitalia, and Telecom, among others. His versatility, distinctive style, and rich visual culture made him a recognized and respected figure in the international creative scene.
In 1997, during a time of profound technological transformation, Oliva embraced the potential of emerging digital art. He developed a hybrid and innovative language that ranged from digital illustration to advanced photo editing, 3D imaging, and animation. As a creative director and digital artist—first with Olivastudio and now with Pixelheads Studio—he led teams of creatives and explored new visual forms. At the same time, he has been teaching digital animation at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, where he shares with new generations the value of interdisciplinary practice and creative research.
Despite the success and completeness he achieved in the digital world, in recent years Oliva has felt the need to return to materiality, gesture, and the physicality of painting. This led him on a renewed journey into traditional painting, rediscovering direct contact with the medium and color in a profound reconnection with the essence of creative action.
His recent works explore a pictorial language suspended between figuration and abstraction, in which expressive impulses coexist with compositional rigor. He uses a wide range of techniques—acrylic, oil, watercolor, charcoal on various surfaces—and occasionally incorporates digital elements, which reflect his fluid and contemporary approach to art.
Rosario Oliva’s painting stands out for its harmonious balance between material and concept, intuition and control. His works reveal a continuous aesthetic exploration that blends urban impressions, layers of visual memory, and a deeply contemporary sensibility. The hybridization of traditional and digital techniques gives rise to a personal expressive language, capable of evoking both intimate and universal atmospheres.
In recent years, Oliva has exhibited in significant national and international venues, gaining recognition from both critics and the public. Among his most notable exhibitions is his solo show "APEIRON" at Medina Gallery in Rome (2025), curated by Giulia Bonetti, where the artist explored the idea of the infinite through a series of works blending gestural painting with digital insertions in a narrative suspended between matter and time.
A key moment in his international presence was his participation in the 5th Barcelona Art Biennial at the MEAM – European Museum of Modern Art, an international context that highlighted the contemporary tension in his work, in dialogue with artists from around the world.
In 2024, several of his pieces were showcased at the Palazzo della Cancelleria Vaticana in Rome as part of the “Collectionist Gallery” project—an important occasion that affirmed his position within the high-end collecting circuit.
That same year, he took part in the Biennale della Creatività in Ferrara, held at the Ferrara Exhibition Center, an event that brought together numerous Italian and international artists and emphasized innovation in contemporary visual languages.
In 2022, his solo exhibition at the Benedetto Robazza Museum in Rocca Priora, curated by Eleonora Gregorio, marked a moment of deep connection between his biographical path and the formal evolution of his painting, inaugurating a new phase of artistic research.
Also noteworthy is Oliva's presence in "Orizzonti" at Palazzo Sponza in Dubrovnik, an international group show that brought Italian and Balkan artists together around themes of inner landscapes and the threshold between the visible and the invisible.
Through these exhibition experiences, Rosario Oliva continues to build a bridge between his extensive background in illustration and digital art and the renewed expressive force of painting, in a journey of ongoing growth and evolution.
