Nicolás Leiva was born in Tucumán, Argentina, in 1958. In 1983 he graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Tucuman and continues his studies in Buenos Aires. Leiva, who always conceived of his career in global terms, exhibited for the first time outside Argentina in 1989, in San José, Costa Rica.

In 1990 move to Miami, precisely at the moment in which it’s international ascendancy as the capital of Latin American art and as a major venue in the international contemporary art scene would become established. Soon his work would become a widely recognizable element in this boom.

Leiva has exhibited widely and realized commissions throughout Latin America, the United States and Europe, as well as South Africa and the Middle East. Since 1996, Leiva has broadened his range of genres beyond painting and drawing to ceramics as well as the pictorial intervention of industrial surfaces, such as automobiles, clothing, motorcycles, surfboards and guitars. Presently he divides his time between Miami - his own studio- and Faenza- producing ceramics at Bottega Gatti, Italy.