"Tino is the meaning of the word artist--the perfect example of a person who is in this world to observe it, look at it closely and act upon what he feels by sharing that feeling with others to the best of his ability.

Tino had a taste for stuff and a sense of what to do with it. He loved food and cooking and ingredients such as sand, clay and wood, which went into his sculpture. He loved his paint and consequently painting and drawing.

The point for Tino, as far as I could see, was to make things delicious: Meals, sculptures, paintings, places. Tino's way was to do no harm and, whenever possible, to do well.

Tino would stay from time to time in our apartment in Manhattan. I remember once when there was nothing much to eat in our kitchen and Jane and I returned from our offices prepared to take Tino out for supper in the neighborhood. Instead Tino had scoured the kitchen and found a tin of crackers, an old can of tuna fish and half a jar of olives and God knows whatever leftovers in the fridge. From basically nothing he managed to conjure up a memorable, delicious meal.

He did the same thing in the Springs [the Nivola home in East Hampton], making a great meal out of the minnows from an estuary of the sea, which we netted before lunch.

Tino's art never seemed to be an act of desperation; more an invention, a challenge and an act of contribution to the inevitable. Tino made himself the agent between the observed and what might be done with the observation. He did this naturally, without pretension, without worrying--the artist as connector.

Tino was a teacher, by his acts, not by preaching, but by pointing the way by inferences and hints. I felt more than once that Saul Steinberg (a master draftsman and Tino's friend and neighbor) was an artist who could draw anything he could think of; he could even draw sound. But Saul was in awe of Tino. Saul may have been a genius, but he was not relaxed about it. Tino was and this is enviable.

I remember once Tino gave Jane and a friend a drawing lesson. Unfortunately, I wasn't there, but was told that what he did was show them how to see.

Tino was a great draftsman and produced a multitude of drawings and paintings. Even some of his terra cotta portraits of friends were in a sense three-dimensional drawings in clay. His beds and beach series were also drawings of a sort, where small details very directly captured the essence of his subject, the way a drawing does.

Tino understood graphic relationships as very few artists did. He had the uncanny ability to put things together, which didn't necessarily belong together. But when he bought them together they suddenly worked.

Tino and Ruth's house in the Springs, East Hampton [New York] is made up of simple choices; the painted blue floor, the empty spaces with the murals Le Corbusier made when he stayed with the Nivolas', Sardinian baskets on the wall, art of friends in the living room, lamps made of a Tinker toy with a good sheet of drawings paper to diffuse the light, pure and wonderful colors, an unpretentious attitude: living modestly and consciously. Outside, in the garden, were freestanding walls with painted drawings and fountains of Tino's making.

I believe everyone who has visited the Nivola house is in awe of how much he had accomplished, seemingly effortlessly. Nothing elaborate, nothing unnecessary, nothing wasteful or arbitrary; simply wonderful."