Nathan Oliveira, Nineteen Twenty-Nine, 1961, oil on canvas, 54 1⁄8 x 50 1⁄8 in. (137.4 x 127.2 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.34
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Artwork Details
- Title
- Nineteen Twenty-Nine
- Artist
- Date
- 1961
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 54 1⁄8 x 50 1⁄8 in. (137.4 x 127.2 cm.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Dress — historic — twenties dress
- Abstract
- Figure female
- Object Number
- 1969.47.34
Artwork Description
Nineteen Twenty-Nine is a painting of Oliveira’s mother drawn from the artist’s memory and imagination. The composition and alternating colors create an unsettling sense of a time just before the 1929 stock market crash devastated his immigrant Portuguese family. In speaking of his early career, Oliveira reflected, “My concern was to use the language of the abstract expressionists, the gesture of the pigment, and somehow put it together to represent the human figure, to restate classical subjects. I built figures out of the pigment gestures themselves.”
Modern Masters: Midcentury Abstraction from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008