Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira was an American artist and prominent member of the second generation of the Bay Area Figurative artists. Though he worked with a variety of media, subjects, and disciplines over the course of his long career, Oliveira is best remembered for the brilliantly colored figurative and landscape paintings.  This exhibit will include sculptures and other artwork by this renowned California artist who influenced generations of artists, including his friend Lowell Herrero. Abstracted human silhouettes, delicate watercolors, and bronze works depicting distorted anatomy round out this exhibition celebrating the work of Nathan Oliveira, a skilled draftsman, gestural painter and figural sculptor. 

While he is remembered for his important role in the 1950s and 60s Bay Area Figurative Movement, European Expressionist movements were highly influential to Oliveira. The works included in this exhibition reflect humanistic themes of solitary figures, in contemplation and perhaps demonstrate experiences of our own condition.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Nathan Oliveira is the most comprehensive study to date of Oliveira's career as artist and teacher. Nathan Oliveira's (1928--2010) passion for continuing an inner-directed artistic tradition attached to the human subject persisted throughout his more than forty years as a painter and master printmaker. His art represents an ongoing dialogue with artists from Rembrandt to Goya to Munch, Beckmann, Giacometti, and de Kooning--whom he recognized for their insights into the human condition. 

He lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was professor emeritus of art at Stanford University, Oliveira is widely regarded as a key figure in American art, and his paintings, monoprints, drawings, watercolors, and sculpture have attracted an international audience. 

Generously illustrated with 172 images, more than 100 in color, and including valuable, previously unpublished biographical and bibliographical information, Nathan Oliveira accompanies the major traveling exhibition of the same name.

Add this book to your library: Nathan Oliveira