) Identify the work. Who is the artist? The title? The date? Do you know the medium that was used?
Artist: Nathan Oliveira
Title: Stage #2 with Bed
Date: 1967
Medium: Oil
2) If the artist is known, are we aware of anything about the artist's life or personality that may have affected his/her creation of the work?
Nathan Joseph Mendonca Roderick, born in Oakland in Dec 1928, was the only child of Elvera Furtado and Joseph Roderick, natives of Portugal whose short-lived marriage was shattered by the economic upheaval of the Great Depression. Raised by his mother, who valued culture and refinement, and a stepfather whose surname he took, Oliveira as a young man showed talent in both art and music. While attending George Washington High School …show more content…
3) During what time period and where was the work created? Discuss what was happening in the cultural, political, economic, or social spheres at the time it was produced which may, or may not have affected its production.
When Oliveira arrived at Stanford that fall he found an art department that was small and limited. Its facilities were scattered: some classes were taught in the Old Union, and his own painting and drawing classes met in a building behind the Stanford Chapel. In 1966 he moved into a workspace in a building on the corner of Emerson Street and Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto. His studio, a large room with a bank of west-facing windows on the second floor, included an empty stage. Oliveira would invite his students there for drawing sessions, and the stage was soon set up with still-life materials, including bones and geometric forms. After attempting a few figure paintings in this new space, the artist had an epiphany that would end his dry spell as a painter: “I turned around and I Looked at the stage which is part of my studio and I said, Goddammit, this is what I am going to …show more content…
A barely open door on the left of the stage and an invented window with its shade pulled down admit slivers of creamy light. Since Oliveira has built his reputation on his renderings of human figures painted expressively, the geometric clarity and emptiness of his stage paintings represented what Eitner characterized as “a sharp change in style.” An invitingly empty painting that features rectangles of red and black punctuated by soft bars of blue gray and yellow, Stage #2 with Bed feels a bit like a Mark Rothko abstraction refined into architecture. In fact, ROthko;s work may have been on Oliveira's mind, as friend Peter Selz had arranged for Rothko to spend the summer of 1967 teaching across the bay at the University of California, Berkeley. It is worth noting that 1967 was the same year that Richard Diebenkorn - a close friend of Oliveira’s - turned towards abstraction and began his Ocean Park
Artist: Nathan Oliveira
Title: Stage #2 with Bed
Date: 1967
Medium: Oil
2) If the artist is known, are we aware of anything about the artist's life or personality that may have affected his/her creation of the work?
Nathan Joseph Mendonca Roderick, born in Oakland in Dec 1928, was the only child of Elvera Furtado and Joseph Roderick, natives of Portugal whose short-lived marriage was shattered by the economic upheaval of the Great Depression. Raised by his mother, who valued culture and refinement, and a stepfather whose surname he took, Oliveira as a young man showed talent in both art and music. While attending George Washington High School …show more content…
3) During what time period and where was the work created? Discuss what was happening in the cultural, political, economic, or social spheres at the time it was produced which may, or may not have affected its production.
When Oliveira arrived at Stanford that fall he found an art department that was small and limited. Its facilities were scattered: some classes were taught in the Old Union, and his own painting and drawing classes met in a building behind the Stanford Chapel. In 1966 he moved into a workspace in a building on the corner of Emerson Street and Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto. His studio, a large room with a bank of west-facing windows on the second floor, included an empty stage. Oliveira would invite his students there for drawing sessions, and the stage was soon set up with still-life materials, including bones and geometric forms. After attempting a few figure paintings in this new space, the artist had an epiphany that would end his dry spell as a painter: “I turned around and I Looked at the stage which is part of my studio and I said, Goddammit, this is what I am going to …show more content…
A barely open door on the left of the stage and an invented window with its shade pulled down admit slivers of creamy light. Since Oliveira has built his reputation on his renderings of human figures painted expressively, the geometric clarity and emptiness of his stage paintings represented what Eitner characterized as “a sharp change in style.” An invitingly empty painting that features rectangles of red and black punctuated by soft bars of blue gray and yellow, Stage #2 with Bed feels a bit like a Mark Rothko abstraction refined into architecture. In fact, ROthko;s work may have been on Oliveira's mind, as friend Peter Selz had arranged for Rothko to spend the summer of 1967 teaching across the bay at the University of California, Berkeley. It is worth noting that 1967 was the same year that Richard Diebenkorn - a close friend of Oliveira’s - turned towards abstraction and began his Ocean Park