NATASHA LANDAU & DAN NISTOR
Paintings and Drawings
RIVAA Gallery is delighted to present paintings and drawings, a two-person exhibition featuring Natasha Landau and Dan Nistor.
Though distinctly different in approach, both artists create deeply imaginative worlds. Landau’s dreamlike paintings and drawings move among landscape, portraiture, memory, and fantasy. Nistor’s expressive paintings are alive with color, texture, and the energy of the artist’s hand.
Together, their works offer two compelling ways of seeing – one unfolding through story and imagination, the other through the physical and emotional act of painting.
Exhibition On View: August 27–September 20, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 29, 6–9 PM
Selected Works By Natasha Landau
Natasha Landau was born and educated in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she studied painting and costume design for film and theater. After immigrating to the United States, she continued her acclaimed career as a costume designer for film, television, and theater. Her work earned Emmy and CableACE Awards, and she designed costumes for more than forty films in the United States and Russia.
Landau has also taught costume design and lectured at institutions including the Juilliard School and Columbia University Film School.
Throughout her life, she has continued to paint and exhibit her artwork. Inspired by literature, music, memory, and her love of nature, Landau works in oil, acrylic, watercolor, and drawing. Her images often seem to exist between the observed and the imagined: landscapes become recollections, figures suggest unfolding stories, and architecture takes on the atmosphere of dreams.
Selected Works By Dan Nistor
Dan Nistor trained as a painter in his native Romania, earning a Master of Fine Arts from the Bucharest National University of Arts. He moved to New York City in 1996 and has continued his artistic practice while also teaching drawing, imaging, fashion design, and fashion illustration at Parsons School of Design, the Art Institute of New York City, and Gibbs College.
Asked about drawing, Nistor describes the process simply: “You draw lines and improve them; sometimes it comes out on the first attempt.” For him, making an image is a continuous act of looking and responding: each new line, color, or form alters the whole, and what comes next must respond to that change. His drawings and paintings feel immediate, tactile, and richly expressive, yet their spontaneity is grounded in a rigorous attention to form, composition, and the relationships among all the elements within the work. Moving freely among portraits, figures, landscapes, animals, and still lifes, Nistor chooses his subjects according to the impulse of the moment. Through vivid color, layered surfaces, and energetic brushwork, each subject becomes an experience of light, movement, and emotional presence.