Artist Birthday: Nathan Oliveira

The work of painter Nathan Oliveira is an interesting example of how the West Coast of the US nurtured its own forms of modernist experiments, including abstract figuratioin, that were quite apart from the Abstract Expressionism of the East Coast.

Artist Birthday for 19 December: Nathan Oliveira (1928-2010 US)

Nathan Oliveira, Standing Man with Stick, 1959, oil on canvas, 152.7 x 101.7 cm The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist (MOMA-P2731)

Oliveira's works usually feature a singular, elongated form usually set against a muted background where the nuances of background color from high to lower value give a subtle suggestion of a horizon line. The exaggeration of the figure's legs give the sense of a somewhat skewed space. Thick patches of warm color lead the viewer's eye from the top of the figure down to the foot. Similarly, the neutral tones of the body in further nuances of the background color help give the composition unity, while the gestural treatment of the surface emphasizes a sense of isolation in the figure. Oliveira's figures also reflect the influence of European figurative artists like Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Giacometti in the elongation of form, and Bacon in the virtual anonymity of the figure which lacks identifying physical attributes.

Background

Many American artists of the late 1940s and 1950s were influenced by Abstract Expressionism, the first American modernist movement, early in their careers. Some persisted in the style even if they did not live in New York, perceived at the time as the center of modern art in America. They either painted in styles imitative of action painting or color field, or continued Abstract Expressionism's emphasis on pure abstraction with little or no reference to subject.

Other artists instead reincorporated subject matter into their work, many revisiting figuration. In California, one group of artists developed a painterly, realistic style. It was as much a reaction to the international to-do over Abstract Expressionism, as it was a conscious effort to establish an indigenous, California modernist school. One style that emerged was called Bay Area Figuration, centered in San Francisco area, named after an exhibition at the Oakland Museum in 1957. The show included a range of genres, from landscape to portraiture.

Nathan Oliveira was born in Oakland, to Portuguese immigrant parents. He studied in 1950 at Mills College under German Expressionist Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts with a BFA (1951) and MFA (1952). His early works were mainly expressive in form, line and color. He drew partly from the European Expressionist figurative tradition that he saw in the work of Beckmann. He saw a power in the German artist's work that he wanted to capture in his own painting. By the late 1950s he had established his signature compositional format of individual figures of all types on vague backgrounds. In 1964 he joined the faculty of art and art history at Stanford University where he remained until retiring in 1988.