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Nathan Oliveira
Painting; Printmaking; Sculpture
American
(Oakland, California, 1928 - 2010, Palo Alto, California)
1999 Distinguished Degree of "Commander" in "The Order of the Infante D. Henrique" awarded by the President of Portugal and the Portuguese government.
    1996 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
    California Society of Printmakers Honors Nathan Oliveira for Distinguished Artistic Achievement
    1994 Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge
    Elected Academy Membership (Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
    1992 Ann O'Day Maples Professor in the Arts Emeritus, Stanford University, CA
    1988 Ann O'Day Maples Professor in the Arts, Endowed Chair, Stanford University, CA
    1985 Academician, Graphic Arts, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
    1984 Academy Institute Award in Art, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
    1982 Elected Associate Member, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
    1974 National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Artist Grant
    1968 Doctor of Fine Arts Degree, Honoris Causa, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
    1963 - 4 Tamarind Lithography Fellowship, Los Angeles, CA
    1963 Arte Actual de America y Espana Special Prize, Madrid, Spain
    1959 Norman Wait Harris Bronze Medal, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
    1958 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
    1957 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant



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Biography

Nathan Oliveira’s paintings are endowed with the traces of the artist’s hand as he works and reworks the surface of the canvas, applying heavy, gestural brushstrokes and adding rich texture to his pieces. Though he is best known for his expressive explorations of the human figure, Oliveira has approached a wide range of subjects, studying animals, birds, Native American ceremonial and fetish objects, and even landscapes. Consistent throughout his oeuvre is an emphasis on haunting forms and ambiguous spaces; his subjects are often estranged from their surroundings. But, while his works may at times seem enigmatic or even melancholy, his art engages viewers, creating an intense yet mysterious dialogue.

Born in Oakland, California, in 1928, Oliveira experienced a lonely childhood, suffering his parents’ divorce at age one and his father’s untimely death several years later. Living with his mother, grandmother, and aunt, Oliveira often felt isolated in the female-dominated household. Early in life he developed a feeling of despondency and an attraction to the darker side of humanity—characteristics which would later surface in his art. Beginning in early adolescence, Oliveira exhibited a penchant for drawing, which eventually led him to enroll in the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1947. He initially studied advertising design but later shifted his focus to painting and printmaking, expressing particular interest in the human figure. During this time, across the Bay at the California School of Fine Arts, abstract expressionism was the dominant style. Oliveira did not embrace the movement’s emphasis on emotive abstraction; instead, he continued to pursue his exploration of the human form even when representation was, as he states, “absolutely out of the style of [the] day.”1 As Peter Selz points out in his publication Nathan Oliveira, the artist maintained a stronger identification with European artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Max Beckmann, and Edvard Munch than he did with his California contemporaries. In the works of these European artists, he found the “unity of visual form and human content” that he could not locate in contemporary American art.2 Although the human figure has dominated Oliveira’s work, the artist has maintained a parallel interest in wildlife, specifically birds, since the 1970s.

In Raptor I (1986) the artist captures the image of a bird with striking beauty. Oliveira positions the bird centrally upon the canvas, portraying it in a majestic pose. Seen in silhouette, the avian creature appears as if perched on a tree limb. The bird is isolated, alienated from its environment in much the same way as the figure in Imi I (see figure 00). The raptor dominates the field, suspended in a space that is dreamlike in its ambiguity. The details of the background have been omitted, thereby obscuring the specifics of time and place and reinforcing the magnificence of the bird itself. Rendered in a soft palette of earth tone browns, muddied whites, and tempered reds, the work elicits an atmosphere of melancholy even as it recalls the colors of nature. Though largely composed of thin layers of paint, areas of heavy impasto around the creature’s head and breast recall the artist’s technique in much of his earlier work. In addition to these patches of dense paint, the artist creates texture with his studied brush strokes, which sweep across the canvas’s surface with elegant rhythm.

Though long admired for his figurative works, Oliveira’s skill as a painter and his ability to capture complex emotions translates fluidly into his paintings of other subjects. Marked by their sensuality and regal presence, Oliveira’s bird paintings exhibit dignified beauty. And like his evocative single figure paintings, the works seem to conceal something just beyond the surface—a secret world filled with imagination and passion. —L.W.

1. In his contribution to Peter Selz’s book on Max Beckmann, Oliveira discusses the influence Beckmann had on his own work. Like Beckmann, who explored the human figure throughout his long career, Oliveira had little sympathy for abstract painting, which was largely favored by his contemporaries. He chose instead to pursue figuration. See Nathan Oliveira, “Afterward,” in Peter Selz, Max Beckmann: The Self-Portraits (New York: Rizzoli Publications, 1992), 107.
2. Peter Selz, Nathan Oliveira (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 17.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

Nathan Oliveira was born in Oakland, California in 1928.  He earned his B.F.A. in 1951 and his M.F.A. in 1952 at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts).  Before this he studied for one summer at Mills College with the German expressionist Max Beckmann.  He began his teaching career at the Richmond Art Center, San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts before joining the art department at Stanford University in 1964.  Oliveira was named the first holder of the Ann O’Day Maples Professorship in the Arts in 1988 and would remain on the faculty at Stanford until his retirement in 1995.  He is the recipient of many awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (1957), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1958), an honorary doctorate from the California College of the Arts (1968), a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant (1974), an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute (1996), the Commander of the Order of Henry the Navigator from the Portuguese government (1999), and election into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  Oliveira’s work, which includes paintings, prints, and sculptures, has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally and included in the collections of notable museums, among them The Art Institute of Chicago; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.  Oliveira died in 2010 in Palo Alto, CA. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2011)

Born in Oakland, California in 1928, Oliveira experienced a lonely childhood, suffering his parents’ divorce at age one and his father’s untimely death several years later. Living with his mother, grandmother, and aunt, Oliveira often felt isolated in the female-dominated household. Early in life he developed a feeling of despondency and an attraction to the darker side of humanity—characteristics which would later surface in his art. Beginning in early adolescence, Oliveira exhibited a penchant for drawing, which eventually led him to enroll in the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1947. While at CCAC, Oliveira came into contact with a number of well-known artists, including Otis Oldfield, Glenn Wessels, Robert Arneson, Robert Bechtle, Billy Al Bengston, Peter Voulkos, and Manuel Neri. He initially studied advertising design but later shifted his focus to painting and printmaking, expressing particular interest in the human figure. Oliveira maintained a stronger identification with European artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Max Beckmann, and Edvard Munch than he did with his California contemporaries. Although the human figure has dominated Oliveira’s work, the artist has maintained a parallel interest in wildlife, specifically birds, since the 1970s. After earning his MFA from CCAC and spending two years in the army, Oliveira taught at both CCAC and the California School of Fine Arts. In 1964, he joined the faculty at Stanford University, where he taught until his retirement in 1995. [Bio from Juicy Paint Exhibition, input by R. Faust, 8/1//2010]



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