ARTIST BIO

Louise Nevelson, a leading sculptor of the twentieth century, pioneered site-specific and installation art with her monochromatic wood sculptures made of box-like structures and nested objects. Nevelson emigrated with her family from czarist Russia to the United States in 1905, settling in Rockland, Maine. By 1920, she had moved to New York City, where she studied drama and later enrolled at the Art Students League. Throughout the early 1930s, Nevelson traveled across Europe and briefly attended Hans Hofmann’s school in Munich, returning to New York in 1932 where she studied once again with Hofmann. She received her first one-person exhibition at the Nierendorf Gallery, New York, in 1941—the first of several with the gallery throughout a decade punctuated by travels to Europe, explorations in printmaking, and work at the Sculpture Center in New York. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, Nevelson had traveled to Guatemala and Mexico to view Pre-Colombian art and began to produce a series of wood landscape sculptures.

In 1977, Nevelson was commissioned to create a sculpture titled “Sky Gate” for the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. She was inspired by a New York skyline view during a flight from New York to Washington. She intended to capture the “windows of New York” among its skyline. The sculpture was destroyed during the September 11 attacks. In “Sky Gate II”, Nevelson used a cast paper technique where paper fiber and pulp fills a mold to create a relief. The depth and dimensions are similar to her work in sculpture, completed in her signature monochromatic white.

Submit Inquiry Below