Customer Reviews

Nathan Oliveira

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Finally a retospective of this American master. Nathan Oliveira is seen here in over fifty years of paintings, monotypes, lithographs, drawings, watercolors and sculpture. This book is a true gem, as all most all the illustrations are in color. Most of the work has never even been seen since this is the first true documentation on Oliveira to come out in book form. Oliveira's paintings are a celebration of color, process, and figurative gesture. Nathan Oliveira may be one of the most overlooked living American artists. This book is a long awaited masterpiece by an American master. A must have for all lovers of art.

The quote is one of Nate's, and I for one, who have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Oliveira a few times through the printmaking world in the SF Bay Area, am pleased with this book. It includes Oliveira's personal history, and documents many of his paintings from the 1950's through the 2000's. I wish there was a larger portion dedicated to his printmaking, but that is a minor and a personal preference. The juxtaposition of energetic brushstrokes, and the calmness of the standing figures offer a visually unique perspective on what painting is for Oliveira. It is paint, it is subject at the same time. It is beauty.

Nathan Oliveira stands alone as one of the Bay Area artists whose paintings remain identifiable despite the myriad experimentations he has made throughout his long and very successful career. Born in 1928 Oliveira has always been an integral part of the Bay Area Artist Group, but at the same time his subject matter has mutated so successfully that he is daily a pioneer. Oliveira has always approached the human form and the landscape, but his versions of those models stray from those of others. His elongated versions of the human body create almost tribal icon figures, ones easily recognized to the followers of representational art as something just outside the spectrum of what is considered representational.

The artist works in many media from sculpture to his very large canvases in oil to his pastel drawings to his extraordinary prints create at Experimental Workshop in the Bay Area. Land masses join sky masses, assemblages of masses of stone become pilings or what might be left as civilization walks away from a once populated city. His colors - bold and noisy - emerge from submissive backgrounds of beige and grey and the results are images that seem to be more concerned with the artist's obsession with isolation and death than with depicting a story or offering a portrait. The essays by Joann Moser and Peter Selz invite us into the life of the artist. This may not be the definitive monograph on this California giant but it is certainly an informative and vividly colorful one for a museum touring show catalogue. Grady Harp, October 10

Finally a retospective of this American master. Nathan Oliveira is seen here in over fifty years of paintings, monotypes, lithographs, drawings, watercolors and sculpture. This book is a true gem, as all most all the illustrations are in color. Most of the work has never even been seen since this is the first true documentation on Oliveira to come out in book form. Oliveira's paintings are a celebration of color, process, and figurative gesture. Nathan Oliveira may be one of the most overlooked living American artists. This book is a long awaited masterpiece by an American master. A must have for all lovers of art.

Finally a retospective of this American master. Nathan Oliveira is seen here in over fifty years of paintings, monotypes, lithographs, drawings, watercolors and sculpture. This book is a true gem, as all most all the illustrations are in color. Most of the work has never even been seen since this is the first true documentation on Oliveira to come out in book form. Oliveira's paintings are a celebration of color, process, and figurative gesture. Nathan Oliveira may be one of the most overlooked living American artists. This book is a long awaited masterpiece by an American master. A must have for all lovers of art.

This book was published for a Nathan Oliveira exhibit at the San Jose (CA) Museum of Art. It portrays the evolution of his painting and many of his most memorable art pieces. This professor emeritus from Stanford University is currently working on a meditation chapel to be built on the campus of that prestigious university.

Just the right amount of history and ample full-color depictions of the artist's masterful use of gesture, color and raw expression. This book really showcases Oliveira's amazing versatility and his under-rated virtuosity as a painter. Oliveira's work should be included among the greats of contemporary art--and this book proves it. Wow!

I don't think that the overtones of existentialism that resonated over forty years ago hold up today. This is a classy book with the full story from Peter Selz. Peter Selz used to teach art history at the Institiute of Design in 1953 -54. I don't think his interest in expressionism fitted the Moholy Nagy idealogy.The reproductions are ample and good.The late prints interest me more than the painterly figure work. A centralized figure that takes so much importance to his ouvre from those days ,is academic.He is sometimes Giacometti, other times Bacon, his sources don't seem to be resolved. I like his stuff better than Diebenkorn,another academic approach to the figure. My preference is for the Chicago figurative painters. Leon Golub's work still carries power, he saw Iraq prison torture scenes before it happened there.One figure seems easy. Compositions of figures such as Golub(who was also into existentialism) carry more weight because there is a message in the interaction of people.His work will hold up not just from a standpoint of subject matter, but form his more original approach to the canvas.For another critique of the San Francisco figure painters see. The Painters Mind: Carl Holty and Romeare Bearden. I am not alone in this judgement. It is a well written ,well illustrated book. Again ,the late prints of Oliviera struck me more than the early work ,as unique work.This book was purchased at Amazon,but it came to me as a gift as a friend received two copies.

Just the right amount of history and ample full-color depictions of the artist's masterful use of gesture, color and raw expression. This book really showcases Oliveira's amazing versatility and his under-rated virtuosity as a painter. Oliveira's work should be included among the greats of contemporary art--and this book proves it. Wow!

plain and simple its a nice book and i like oliveria but i really don't think it was worth the price new- and i have quite a few books on painters.