Biography from Anita Shapolsky Gallery:
| Louise Nevelson was born in Kiev, Russia. Her family moved to the
United States in 1905, and in 1920 she moved to New York City and began
studying at the Art Students League in 1929.
Using old pieces of wood, found objects, she constructed huge walls,
enclosed box arrangements of complex and rhythmic abstract
shapes. Examples of Nevelson's work are in 50 museums including
the Whitney, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern
Art in New York.
Her first one-woman show was at the Karl
Nierendorf Gallery in NYC in 1941. She had solo exhibitions at
the Norlyst and Nierendorf Galleries from 1943 to 1944. In later
years she studied printmaking and experimented with marble and
terra-cotta. Her fame came about from her show "Ancient Games and
Ancient Places" at Grand Central Moderns. This led to a series of
wooden assemblages.
She is considered one of the most important American sculptors. Louise Nevelson died in 1988 at the age of 88.
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Biography from AskART:
| Creator of wood assemblages made from found objects and parts of
furniture doused in black paint, Louise Nevelson became the darling of
the New York art world, especially during the last three decades of her
life when her success was assured. She cultivated an artistic
image, was thin and draped clothes haphazardly on her figure, smoked
small cigars, and wore exceedingly long, fake eyelashes.
She was
born Louise Berliawsky in Kiev, Russia, and at age five, moved with her
family to Rockland, Maine where her father ran a lumber yard. In
a town that was mostly Protestant, middle class, white people, she felt
out of place as a Jew and an immigrant. In 1920, she moved to New
York, studied at the Art Students League with Kenneth Hayes Miller, and
married Charles Nevelson, whose "WASP" family she regarded as terribly
stuffy. They had a son, and when he was nine years old, she went
to Munich to study, separating from her husband and leaving her son for
several years with her parents.
In Germany, she studied with
Hans Hoffman until the Nazis drove him away, and then she studied in
Paris before returning to America to raise her son and pursue her art
career. From 1932 to 1933, she was in Mexico as an assistant to
muralist Diego Rivera. In 1941, she had her first one-woman show,
which was held at the Nierendorf Gallery in New York, but her break
through did not come until 1957, when she began her box-like
assemblages and received much critical acclaim.
In 1959,
Louise Nevelson was one of "Sixteen Americans" in an important Museum
of Modern Art exhibition. In the mid 1960s, she began welding
found objects to welded steel, and directed a team of workers to make
her black painted sculptures. For her, the color black symbolized
harmony and continuity.
She also held several teaching positions
including at the Educational Alliance in New York City; the Adult
Education Program in Great Neck, New York; and at the New York School
for the Deaf.
Nevelson lived to age eighty nine, and was much
pleased that her son, Mike, also became a successful sculptor. In
1976, she wrote her autobiography, Dawns and Dusks, in which
she credited her own determination for her success. In
recognition of that success, the U.S. government in 2000 issued special
Louise Nevelson commemorative stamps, with five varieties, each with a
photo of one of her monochrome sculptures.
Sources include:
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Artists
Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Louise Nevelson is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Abstract Expressionism
Sculptors
Women Artists
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