Watercolors by Nathan Oliveira

Santa Fe Nudes #73, 1999, 12" x 9” vertical, watercolor

Nathan Oliveira was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents.

Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions, in addition to having been included in hundreds of group exhibitions in important museums and galleries worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  

In 1959 Oliveira was the youngest painter included in the groundbreaking exhibition, New Images of Man, which included established artists such as Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

After serving as a Visiting Artist at several universities, he became a tenured Professor of Studio Art at Stanford University from 1964 until he retired in 1995.  During his time at Stanford, one of his students was Pamela Djerassi.  Oliveira passed away in 2010 at his home in Palo Alto, California.

Donors: Oliveira Art LLC, Joe Oliveira private collection,  collection of Lisa Lamoure and Joe Oliveira, Oliveira Art LLC