White Lady

Nathan Oliveira

1964

A 1964 lithograph in which Nathan Oliveira renders a woman’s face as a pale, almost spectral presence, using smudges and washes to suggest mood rather than an exact likeness.

At first glance the face seems to float out of a velvety black field—hair haloed in white, deep shadowed eyes and blurred edges that feel both intimate and distant.

By treating lithography like painting—with gestures, erasures, and atmospheric washes—this work helped expand postwar American printmaking toward expressionistic, psychologically charged portraits that blur figuration and abstraction.

Palette

Art Terms

Lithography Print Portrait Figurative Gestural Monochrome Expressionism Abstract Expressionism

Exhibitions

Twenty Lithographs: Graphic Art Processes

1941

Committed to Print

1988

American Painters as New Lithographers

1964

American Prints of the 20th Century

1954