Gustavo Novoa is the only son of a family of lawyers from Santiago, Chile.  He attended the Academy of Fine Arts and Law School there, only to learn that structured careers were not for him. Novoa made his debut as an artist in the early '60's selling watercolors and works in crayon in the streets of Paris, principally Montmartre.  His first one-man show was sponsored by the Chilean Ambassador at the Maison de L'Amerique Latine in 1961. The late Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain sponsored his second show in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1962.  Showing in galleries In the Faubourg St. Honore and the Salon de la Jeune Peninture completed his Parisian background but, by 1965, he had become an adoptive "New Yorker."  He admits to having been "lured like many others by the American Dream on one hand and such movies as 'West Side Story,' 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' and 'The Wizard of Oz' on the other."

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"Bonds with reality are very hard to shake once you establish them."  With this premise in mind Novoa constructed, without the help of the real jungle or zoos, a new Paradise of mystical serenity.  The environment he created exceeded the limitations of Time and Space. Panthers, lions, zebras, tigers, elephants, peacocks, and rhinos, deprived of their ferocity, seemed to observe the observer with wise and amused tolerance.