NEVELSON, Louise

(b. 23 September 1899 in Kiev, Russia; d. 17 April 1988 in New York City), acclaimed abstract sculptor whose long maturation period culminated in a rich body of work in the 1960s that exemplified the creative energy of the medium at that moment in the art world.

Nevelson, born Leah Berliawsky, was one of four children of Isaac and Minna Zeisel (Smolerank) Berliawsky. The family immigrated to the United States in 1905, settling in the small coastal town of Rockland, Maine, where her father prospered in the lumber business and her mother was a homemaker. Because of her Russian-Jewish heritage, Nevelson always felt like an outsider in the provincial New England town. She once remarked, "I never made friends because I didn't intend to stay in Rockland, and I didn't want anything to tie me down." Nevelson inherited her parents' passionate belief in freedom and independence of thought, a radical orientation in politics, and a crusader's attitude toward women's rights. For most of her life she felt different from her peers, and she took pleasure in accentuating this difference through her unconventional fashion style. Thick sable eyelashes and distinctive head-wear that framed her beautifully contoured face became Nevelson's personal trademarks.

Nevelson had little interest in school except for her art classes, where she excelled. Her art teachers, who were quick to recognize her talent, dubbed her "the artist." In 1918, shortly before her graduation from Rockland High School, Nevelson met a wealthy shipping company executive, Charles Nevelson, and they were married two years later in Boston on 12 June 1920. The couple moved to New York City, where Nevelson studied voice, drama, and art. She later observed, "I had the foresight to understand that all of these arts were pretty much one. All of them were essential; one supported the other."

In 1922 her son was born and, as a result, it was not until 1929 that she pursued art as a career, beginning by enrolling at the Art Students League. In 1931, finding marriage too restrictive, she separated from her husband (they divorced in 1941) and left her son with her family in Maine in order to study with the renowned artists Hans Hofmann and Diego Rivera. From 1933 to 1958 Nevelson gradually developed the style for which she became famous in the 1960s, drawing heavily on cubism and surrealism.

In 1958 her painted black wood environment, Moon Garden + One, exhibited at Grand Central Moderns in New York, demonstrated the theatricality of her work and also confirmed the debt her work owed to cubism. Always at the forefront, she was the first artist to create a whole environment, proving her affinity with drawing, collage, and architecture. Sky Cathedral, an important piece mounted in that exhibition, was an extravagant composition of stacked wooden boxes overflowing with found objects. The Museum of Modern Art acquired it in 1958, and this proved to be a significant breakthrough. As a result, in 1959, at the age of sixty, Nevelson was invited by the Museum of Modern Art to create a full exhibition. For that setting, she installed a sensational all-white environment, Dawn's Wedding Feast, and the critics deemed it "colossal."

Nevelson flourished in the dynamic 1960s. Her work continued to be exhibited in prestigious galleries, and these years were crammed with commissions, exhibitions, and honors. She started to work with gold in 1961, and her exhibition The Royal Tides was shown at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. In 1963 Nevelson became the first woman artist to have a one-person show at the selective Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, and in 1964 she began her affiliation with the prestigious Pace Gallery in New York. The Whitney Museum presented the first major retrospective of her work in 1967.

During the 1960s major international collectors became aware of her innovative work. In July 1962 she won the grand prize in the First Sculpture International at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, and that same summer she represented the United States at the thirty-first Venice Biennale. Her three rooms of "wall furniture," painted in black, white, and gold, greeted visitors to the U.S. pavilion; her exhibition was one of the few real sensations of the entire biennale.

Nevelson's growing prestige led to her involvement with various artists' associations. In 1962 Nevelson became the first woman president of the National Artists' Equity, and she succeeded in increasing the membership, especially among younger and avant-garde artists. In 1966 the socially conscious Nevelson joined with other artists to produce the Los Angeles Tower for Peace. The exhibition was a sixty-foot tower covered with pictures donated by artists from Los Angeles, New York, and Europe to protest the United States' policies in Vietnam.

In later years Nevelson's prominence attracted impressive commissions for public environments. Princeton University commissioned her monumental Cor-ten steel outdoor sculpture in 1969, and during the late 1970s Nevelson left her personal mark on the city she loved. In December 1977 her beautifully decorated Chapel of the Good Shepherd for Saint Peter's Lutheran Church on Park Avenue was dedicated. In 1979 the Louise Nevelson Plaza was installed in the canyons of lower Manhattan on Maiden Lane.

Nevelson's early life presaged the fight for women's rights in the 1960s. Long before the antiestablishment mood of the 1960s, Nevelson had freed herself of social conventions. In the 1960s women were demanding equality and recognition, but Nevelson had used her prodigious energy to insert herself into the male-dominated world of sculpture much earlier. Fame had come late to this self-proclaimed "original creation," and Nevelson savored it until the end. She worked until her death from lung cancer in April 1988; her body was cremated. On 11 September 2001 one of Nevelson's massive sculptures, Sky Gate, which had hung in the mezzanine of One World Trade Center since 1978, was destroyed in the terrorist attacks that took place on that day.

Biographies of Nevelson include Colette Roberts, Nevelson (1964); Arnold B. Glimcher, Louise Nevelson (1972); Laurie Wilson, Louise Nevelson: Iconography and Sources (1981); Jean Lipman, Nevelson's World (1983); and Laurie Lisle, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life (1990). Other useful sources are Nicholas and Elena Calas, Icons and Images of the Sixties (1971), and Diana MacKown, Dawn and Dusk: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown (1976). Significant articles written about Nevelson's life during the 1960s include "All That Glitters," Time (31 Aug. 1962), and "Los Angeles: Tower for Peace," Art News (Apr. 1966). An obituary is in the New York Times (18 Apr. 1988).

Margaret Garry Burke