Louise Nevelson grew up in a family engaged in the lumber business, and after emigrating from her native Ukraine to New York, she studied voice, theater, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. She also served as an assistant on Diego Rivera’s mural projects. In the 1950s she developed an interest in pre-Columbian art and traveled through Mexico and Guatemala. After these journeys, she began her wood landscape sculpture series in 1954.
These works are assemblages made by cutting discarded wood, furniture parts, and other everyday castoffs, painting them entirely black, and then packing, grouping, stacking, and combining them within box-like structures. The monochrome surface produces visual effects through variations of tone and shadow, and the resulting interplay of light enhances the three-dimensional presence of the forms. Through Nevelson’s dialogue with her materials, the discarded wood is revitalized―as if placed upon an altar―and the individual elements come into harmony, forming a unified sculptural whole and generating a new spatial environment.
Nevelson is said to have valued improvisation in her creative process, and this improvisational quality is also evident in her printmaking. Our museum holds several of her prints, created using etching and aquatint techniques, as well as works incorporating silver leaf and paper.