Nevelson, Louise (1900–1988)

Russian-born US sculptor and printmaker. A major exponent of assemblage sculpture, she was renowned for her room-sized wall-like reliefs consisting of stacked tiers of shallow open boxes filled with abstract arrangements in wood, as in Black Majesty 1956 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). From the 1960s she worked with other materials, for example plexiglass in Ice Palace 1967 (private collection, New York), and later produced outdoor works in steel and aluminium.

Nevelson's early work, small sculptures of found objects produced in the 1940s, has primitive and surrealist overtones. The environmental ‘walls’, or ‘cathedrals’, for which she is best known date from the early 1950s. Painted a uniform black or (in later models) white or gold, the ‘walls’ consist of stacked tiers of shallow open boxes filled with abstract arrangements in wood.