Louise Nevelson

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Louise Nevelson : biography

August 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988

First exhibitions and the 1940s

In 1941, Nevelson had her first solo exhibition at Nierendorf Gallery. Gallery owner Karl Nierendorf represented her until his death in 1947. During her time at Nierendorf, Nevelson came across a shoeshine box owned by local shoeshiner Joe Milone. She displayed the box at the Museum of Modern Art, bringing her the first major attention she received from the press. An article about her appeared in Art Digest in November 1943. Archives of American Art. Louise Nevelson papers. Tear sheet from Art Digest (November 15, 1943). Retrieved November 6, 2011 In the 1940s, she began producing Cubist figure studies in materials such as stone, bronze, terra cotta, and wood. In 1943, she had a show at Norlyst Gallery called "The Clown as the Center of his World" in which she constructed sculptures about the circus from found objects. The show was not well received, and Nevelson stopped using found objects until the mid-1950s. Despite poor reception, Nevelson’s works at this time explored both figurative abstracts inspired by Cubism and the exploitative and experimental influence of Surrealism. The decade provided Nevelson with the materials, movements, and self-created experiments that would mold her signature modernist style in the 1950s.Rapaport, 9.

Mid-career

During the 1950s, Nevelson exhibited her work as often as possible. Yet despite awards and growing popularity with art critics, she continued to struggle financially. To make ends meet she began teaching sculpture classes in adult education programs in the Great Neck public school system. Her own work began to grow to monumental size, moving beyond the human scale sized works she had been creating during the early 1940s. Nevelson also visited Latin America, and discovered influences for her work in Mayan ruins and the steles of Guatemala. In 1955 Nevelson joined Colette Roberts’ Grand Central Modern Gallery, where she had numerous one-woman shows. There she exhibited some of her most notable mid-century works: Bride of the Black Moon, First Personage, and the exhibit "Moon Garden + One", which showed her first wall piece, Sky Cathedral, in 1958. The 1958 series of exhibitions were described by critic Hilton Kramer as "remarkable and unforgettable."Rapaport, 14. That year the Museum of Modern Art purchased one of Nevelson’s Sky Cathedral works, and in 1959 Nevelson was included in MoMA’s Sixteen Americans exhibition.Rapaport, 19. During this period, she painted her wood black and put on entirely black shows. In the early 1960s, she began creating white and gold pieces, and enclosing her small sculptures in wooden boxes. The change in scale of her sculptures, the influence of Latin American ancient art, and her gallery activity during this time is credited with bringing "Nevelson’s sculpture in league with the grand scale of Abstract Expressionist painting, as well as the earlier mural painting of Rivera."

From 1957 to 1958, she was president of the New York Chapter of Artists’ Equity and in 1958 she joined the Martha Jackson Gallery, where she was guaranteed income and became financially secure. That year, she was photographed and featured on the cover of Life. In 1960 she had her first one-woman show in Europe at Galerie Daniel Cordier in Paris. Later that year a collection of her work, grouped together as "Dawn’s Wedding Feast", was included in the group show, "Sixteen Americans", at the Museum of Modern Art alongside Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1962 she made her first museum sale to the Whitney Museum of American Art, who purchased the black wall, Young Shadows. That same year, her work was selected for the 31st Venice Biennale and she became national president of Artists’ Equity, serving until 1964.

In 1962 she left Martha Jackson Gallery, had a brief stint at the Sidney Janis Gallery, and then joined Pace Gallery in the fall of 1963. Nevelson had shows at Pace about every two years until the end of her career. In 1967 the Whitney Museum hosted the first retrospective of Nevelson’s work, showing over one hundred pieces, including drawings from the 1930s and contemporary sculptures. In 1964 she created two works: Homage to 6,000,000 I and Homage to 6,000,000 II as a tribute to victims of The Holocaust.Rapaport, 23. Nevelson hired several assistants over the years: Teddy Haseltine, Tom Kendall, and Diana Mackown, who helped in the studio and handled daily affairs. By this time, Nevelson had solidified commercial and critical success.