The son of a Swiss mother and a Salvadoran father, Nils Nova grew up in El Salvador before the family moved to Lucerne in 1981. He studied at the Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU) from 1997 to 2001 and was a guest professor at HEAD Genève (CH) from 2005 to 2009.
Since 2001, Nils Nova has been represented nationally and internationally with his installations, photographic works and paintings in numerous solo and group exhibitions, such as: Fundation Tapies Barcelona, The New Institute Rotterdam, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Centre Culturel Suisse Paris,Villa Cavrois Musée Nationaux de France, SESC Pinheiros Sao Paulo, Kunstverein Heilbronn, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, Museo Tamayo and Museo El Eco Mexico City, 14th Architecture Biennale of Venice and 53rd Art Biennale of Venice.
"Nils Nova's handling of different motivic approaches and his combination of different media are conceptual in nature, but nevertheless follow an instinctive and associative approach to the respective problems. His oeuvre is characterized by a pictorial way of thinking and a continuous painterly practice in which the perception of surface and spatial illusion fluctuates and representationalism and pure abstraction overlap again and again(...)" Max Wechsler
Nils Nova lives and works in Lucerne (CH).