Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing artworks created by Louise Nevelson.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com
Creator of wood assemblages made from found objects and parts of furniture doused in black paint, Louise Nevelson became the darling of the New York art world, especially during the last three decades of her life when her success was assured. She cultivated an artistic image, was thin and draped clothes haphazardly on her figure, smoked small cigars, and wore exceedingly long, fake eyelashes.
She was born Louise Berliawsky in Kiev, Russia, and at age five, moved with her family to Rockland, Maine where her father ran a lumber yard. In a town that was mostly Protestant, middle class, white people, she felt out of place as a Jew and an immigrant. In 1920, she moved to New York, studied at the Art Students League with Kenneth Hayes Miller, and married Charles Nevelson, whose "WASP" family she regarded as terribly stuffy. They had a son, and when he was nine years old, she went to Munich to study, separating from her husband and leaving her son for several years with her parents.
In Germany, she studied with Hans Hoffman until the Nazis drove him away, and then she studied in Paris before returning to America to raise her son and pursue her art career. From 1932 to 1933, she was in Mexico as an assistant to muralist Diego Rivera. In 1941, she had her first one-woman show, which was held at the Nierendorf Gallery in New York, but her break through did not come until 1957, when she began her box-like assemblages and received much critical acclaim.
In 1959, Louise Nevelson was one of "Sixteen Americans" in an important Museum of Modern Art exhibition. In the mid 1960s, she began welding found objects to welded steel, and directed a team of workers to make her black painted sculptures. For her, the color black symbolized harmony and continuity.
She also held several teaching positions including at the Educational Alliance in New York City; the Adult Education Program in Great Neck, New York; and at the New York School for the Deaf.
Nevelson lived to age eighty nine, and was much pleased that her son, Mike, also became a successful sculptor. In 1976, she wrote her autobiography, Dawns and Dusks, in which she credited her own determination for her success. In recognition of that success, the U.S. government in 2000 issued special Louise Nevelson commemorative stamps, with five varieties, each with a photo of one of her monochrome sculptures.
SOURCES
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Artists
Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s
Biography from the Archives of AskART
TIMELINE
1899 Born in Kiev, Ukraine
1905 Moved Rockland, USA
1929–1930 Studied visual and performing arts, including dramatics at the Art Students League
1931 Attended Hans Hofmann’s school in Munich, Germany
1932 Returned to New York and assisted Diego Rivera on murals for the WPA Federal Art Project
1937 Joined the WPA as a teacher for the Educational Alliance School of Art
1947 Studied etching with Stanley William Hayter at his Atelier 17 in New York
1949–1950 Worked in marble and terra-cotta and executed her totemic Game Figures
1957–1959 Became a president of the Artist’s Equity New York chapter
1959 Received a grand Prize for work in the Art USA exhibition at the New York Coliseum
1966 Became vice-president of the International Association of Artists
1966 Received Honorary Degree from Western College for Women in Oxford, USA
1969 Received a MacDowell Colony Medal in Peterborough, USA
1973 Received a honorary degree from Smith College in Northampton, USA and Columbia University in New York, USA
1985 Received a National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan
1988 Died in New York, USA
2000 Was the subject of a set of Louise Nevelson commemorative stamps issued by the U.S Postal Service
EXHIBITIONS
2013
Midnight Party, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA
Louise Nevelson: Black, Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, USA
2012
Louise Nevelson, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, USA
Selections From The Estate: 1954-1987, Timothy Yarger Fine Art, Beverly Hills, USA
2011
Louise Nevelson, Alan Avery Art Company, Atlanta, USA
Rediscoveries 1, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, USA
Louise Nevelson: Collages, Pace Prints, New York, USA
Louise Nevelson 1899 – 1988, The Architect of Shadow, Artiscope, Brussels, Belgium
2010
Louise Nevelson, Galerie Thomas, Munich, Germany (solo)
Advancing Abstraction in Modern Sculpture, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, USA
Louise Nevelson, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, USA
2009
Louise Nevelson: Dawns and Dusks, Louise Blouin Foundation, London, England (solo)
Louise Nevelson: Dawns and Dusks, Pace Gallery, New York, USA
Louise Nevelson: Collages, Galleria Il Ponte, Florence, Italy (solo)
The Pull of Experiment: Postwar American Printmaking, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, USA
2008
Jesuvian Process, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, USA
Doppio Songo Dell' Arte (Art's Double Dream), Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, USA
2007
De-Natured: Works from the Anderson Collection, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, USA
Light Time and Three Dimensions, Pace Gallery, New York, USA
The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson, The Jewish Museum, New York, USA; travelled to de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA (solo)
2006
Louise Nevelson: Small Works, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, USA (solo)
Louise Nevelson: The Architecture of the Light, Nohra Haime Gallery, New York, USA (solo)
2005
Louise Nevelson: Ceramics and Sculpture, Greenfield Sacks Gallery, Santa Monica, USA (solo)
Collecting for the Cause: Activist Art in the 1960s and '70s, Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, USA
Continuum: 130th Anniversary of the Art Students League of New York, ACA Galleries, New York, USA
2004
Picasso to Pop: A Growing Contemporary Collection, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, USA
Louise Nevelson, Hackett Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (solo)
2003
Louise Nevelson: Selections from the Farnsworth Art Museum, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, USA
Going Modern at the Allen: American Painting and Sculpture 1950-1980, The Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, USA
Imagine: Selections from the permanent collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA
2002
True Grit: Seven Female Visionaries Before Feminism, Boise Art Museum, Boise, USA
Louise Nevelson: Structures Evolving, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, USA
2001
Louise Nevelson, Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris, France (solo)
Points of Departure II: Connecting with Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA
1999
Drawings, Greenfield Sacks Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
Louise Nevelson, Sculpture and Collages, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, USA
1998
Louise Nevelson: Sculpture and Drawings from the 1940s, Washburn Gallery, New York, USA (solo)
The 60s in the Seventies, Ubu Gallery, New York, USA
1997
Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, USA (solo)
Assemblage: More Than Meets The Eye, Choate House Gallery, Pace University, Pleasantville, USA
1994
Louise Nevelson, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy (solo)
The Box: From Duchamp to Horn, Ubu Gallery, New York, USA
1991
10 Sculptors of the New York School, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
1986
Louise Nevelson, Michel Soskine Inc., New York, USA (solo)
1983
Nuclear Weapons Freeze Benefit Exhibition, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
1967
Louise Nevelson,The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, USA (solo)
Sculpture: A Generation of Innovation, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield,CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble, France
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Tate Gallery, London, U.K
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven,CT
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY