Nathan Oliveira is regarded today as one America’s great masters of extracting profound meaning from abstracted images of the human figure.
Originally a member of the Bay Area Figurative movement, Oliveira developed in his paintings, works on paper and sculpture a unique and deeply introspective pictorial practice derived from the artist’s observed and inner-imaginative realms that afforded succinct visual interpretations of the vexing existential complexities of man’s engagement with the world. He aspired in his work to deliver the closest possible sense of his own personal experience and imagination, exploring the mysteries of the human condition. His work is a kind of visual reliquary of the intense, nearly sacred, significance that Oliveira attached to the human form.
