The Art of Nathan Oliveira opens at Tacoma Art Museum

Tacoma Art Museum is currently hosting The Art of Nathan Oliveira, a definitive retrospective showing through November 30. This traveling national exhibition of nearly sixty works by the distinguished Bay Area artist examines the full scope of Oliveira's work, including paintings, prints, and sculptures spanning over forty years of his career.

The Art of Nathan Oliveira was organized by the San Jose Museum of Art and guest curated by Peter Selz. Major exhibition sponsorship was provided by the Oshman Family Foundation. McManis, Faulkner, and Morgan is an exhibition sponsor, and the Richard Florsheim Art Fund provided additional support.

Oliveira is a key figure in the first generation after the New York School of abstract expressionism, his gestural paintings, prints, and sculptures reinsert the figure into the evolving and rich tradition of American abstraction. Celebrated nationally, Oliveira has worked for over four decades in the San Francisco Bay Area and is associated with Bay Area figurative painters including Richard Diebenkorn, David Park and Elmer Bischoff.

Oliveira's first national recognition came with the inclusion of his first major exhibition New Images of Man in the 1959 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, organized by Peter Selz, acclaimed art historian and former Museum of Modern Art curator. Oliveira was one of the youngest artists in the show, and his work caused much controversy due to his focus on figuration, as opposed to the other artists on display, most of which were part of the abstract expressionist movement of New York and Europe. These abstract expressionists included well known artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Francis Bacon.

In his early years, Oliveira was driven to become a portrait painter, but through his education at Oakland's California College of Arts and Crafts, he gained an exposure to expressionist and abstract models of contemporary art. He employed these models and techniques to create images which are clearly recognizable.

Oliveira's art is known for its themes of darkness, isolation and struggle, and his talents include a brilliant ability to communicate an emotionally charged sense of line and color, which he often created through assertive brush or knife strokes. He was influenced by the works of northern Europe's modern greats such as Oskar Kokoshka, Edvard Munch and particularly Max Beckmann.

The Art of Nathan Oliveira is organized into five chronological sections: "The Solitary Figure," when his works portrayed singular human figures. He then became interested in ambiguous light-filled landscapes which have been noted to be suggestive of archeological sites during his "Sites" period. "Windhovers" is a period in which Oliveira was inspired by the kestrels and hawks which thrive in the Stanford hills. His "Stelaes"[CP1] period is characterized by a range of watercolor, drawings and prints, which refer to ancient monoliths symbolic of the life force.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 250 page, full color catalogue detailing the artist's paintings, monoprints and sculptures. The exhibition catalogue is co-authored by Peter Selz and the Smithsonian American Art Museum Senior Curator Joann Moser. Nathan Oliveira will visit Tacoma Art Museum Saturday, September 20 at 2 pm to speak about his work and his career in conjunction with the exhibition.