Nineteen Twenty-Nine

Nathan Oliveira, Nineteen Twenty-Nine, 1961, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.34
Copied 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

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
  • Figure female
  • Dress — historic — twenties dress
  • Abstract
Object Number
1969.47.34
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/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