Louise Nevelson

1. Louise Nevelson

2. Louise Nevelson was born on Sept 23, 1899 as Leah Berliawsky in Kiev, Russia. She was one of 4 children in her family. In 1905, the family moved to Rockland, Maine where her father established a lumberyard.

3. Her talent for art showed itself at an early age. Her parents encouraged her creativity. Often she worked on collages with wood scraps from her father's lumberyard. Although she was also interested in dance and theater, she always knew she would be a sculptor.

4. In 1920, she married Charles Nevelson (the prosperous co-owner of a shipping company) and moved to New York where she pursued studies in drama and dance. Two years later, their son Myron (Mike) was born.

5. Nevelson studied at the Art Students League in New York. In 1931, she separated from her husband and their son went to live with his grandmother. She continued to study art and worked as an assistant to another famous artist, Diego Rivera.

6. She participated in her first group exhibit in 1935 and her first solo exhibit in 1941, both in New York.

7. During the 1950s, Nelson started using odd pieces of wood, found objects, cast metal and other materials to create collages within boxes and arranged the boxes into large walls. She then painted her collages entirely with black, white (White Vertical Water, 1972), or gold (Royal Tide I, 1960) paint.

8. In 1956, the Whitney Museum purchased Black Majesty. In 1957, the Brooklyn Museum purchased First Personage. In 1958, the Museum of Modern Art purchased Sky Cathedral.

9. Once a friend showed Nevelson an early American rocking chair that he had just acquired. He asked Nevelson's opinion of the chair. "I couldn't care less about the chair," she said, "but look at its shadow."

10. During the 1960s and 1970s, she received several honorary degrees from well-known universities including Western College for Women, Smith College, Columbia University, and Boston University. This photo was taken of Nevelson in her studio in 1965.

11. In 1969 Princeton University commissioned her first monumental outdoor steel structure, Atmosphere and Environment X, completed in 1970.

12. In 1970, the City of Scottsdale was awarded a $20,000 grant to commission a work of art by an outstanding American sculptor. In 1972, the Scottsdale Fine Arts Commission selected Louise Nevelson to create her first large scale work in the Southwest. The completed sculpture, formally titled Atmosphere and Environment XIII, became known as Windows to the West and it is located at the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall.

13. She also completed Night Presence IV in 1973, a 22.5 foot sculpture for Central Park in New York City, for the “wonderful city where she worked and lived.” Later the city named a square for her.

14. She became the first American artist to design a chapel. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd at Saint Peter's Church, built in 1977, is a five-sided space measuring 28 by 21 feet. The sculptural elements are white painted wood on white walls.

15. She now had the artistic recognition that she desired and celebrity status. She was a very colorful character with spidery eyelashes, clunky jewelry, a scarf smoothed over her head, and extravagant furs. "I'm a queen to myself," she said. "I'm probably even a king to myself."

16. At the age of 80, she was elected to the famous American Academy of Arts and Letters. The strength and huge scale of her work changed how people would view the work of women artists. This sculpture, entitled Dawn Shadows, was completed in 1983 and it resides in Chicago.

17. On April 17, 1988, Nevelson died of lung cancer in her home in New York City. She was 88 years old and left an estate worth $100 million dollars.

18. Louise Nevelson's work can be found internationally in over eighty public museum, university, corporate, and municipal collections. This sculpture, entitled City on the High Mountain, was created in 1983 and it resides at the Storm King Art Center in New York.