California painter Nathan Oliveira was engaged in printmaking throughout his career. He taught himself lithography in the late 1940s, as there were very few printers working in the United States at that time. He studied painting and printmaking at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in Oakland, looking closely at artists such as Rembrandt, Durer, Goya, Lautrec, Picasso, Matisse, and the German Expressionists, who all made prints as an integral part of their practice. June Wayne invited Oliviera to Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1963, just a few years after the workshop opened in Los Angeles. He would return to Tamarind when the workshop relocated to Albuquerque, working with several Tamarind-trained printers over the years. He was on the faculty of the art department at Stanford University for over thirty years, where he established a printmaking program.

Oliveira created a five-color lithograph for the 1975 anniversary portfolio Suite Fifteen, titled Acoma Hawk II, which is the last remaining edition from his long association with Tamarind. His work is represented in major museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.