ART CITIES: Los Angeles-Louise Nevelson

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. An interest in shadow and space materialized in her first all-black sculptures, introducing a visual language that came to characterize much of her work from the mid-1950s onward.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

A pioneer of assemblage art, Louise Nevelson emigrated from Russia to Maine with her family in 1905. At an early age she played with scraps from her father’s successful lumberyard, and by age 10 she had decided to become a professional sculptor. In 1920, she married Charles Nevelson and moved to New York where she studied at the Art Students League from 1928 to 1930. In 1931, she left for Europe where she briefly attended Hans Hofmann’s school in Munich, only to return under his tutelage at the Art Students League in 1932. In 1933, Nevelson began assisting Diego Rivera on murals he was executing under the W.P.A. Federal Art Project, who also employed her as a teacher at the Educational Alliance School of Art in lower Manhattan. Nevertheless, Nevelson remained practically unknown as an artist until her a one-woman show at the Nierendorf Gallery in New York in 1941. The exhibition with works by Louise Nevelson features, monochromatic wooden sculptures, mixed media collages, and sculptural wall reliefs created by the artist between the 1950s and 1980s. Marking the fifth exhibition dedicated to Nevelson’s work ever mounted in Los Angeles, this immersive presentation highlights the relationship between Nevelson as a sculptor and her lifelong practice of creating wall-based assemblage and collage. Deeply engaged with the legacies of Cubism and Constructivism, Nevelson’s artworks have been celebrated for incorporating unexpected combinations of materials and forms. As part of her distinctive approach to abstraction, the artist often explored the visual possibilities of compartmentalized elements and forms, a strategy that recurs across her sculpture, assemblage, collage, and jewelry making. Throughout her career, Nevelson nurtured an artistic practice marked by tireless and vigorous experimentation with materiality, shape, and space. The exhibition speaks to her pioneering yet historically overlooked role in the development of what came to be known as installation art. Bespoke design elements—including accent walls, tinted windows, and blue gel lighting—reference Nevelson’s iconic “environments,” which proposed new ways of seeing and experiencing art. Among the highlights of the exhibition are large-scale, black-painted wooden sculptures such as the monumental “Untitled (Sky Cathedral)” (1970-75); rare white-painted sculptures, including the wall-mounted “Southern Shores VII, XII and XV” (1966) and the freestanding “Chapel Study” (ca. 1975), a columnar structure produced by Nevelson ahead of the 1977 dedication of her “Chapel of the Good Shepherd”, a sculptural environment within Saint Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan; and the intricate, black-painted, wall-mounted sculptures “Mirror-Shadow I” (1985) and “Mirror-Shadow VII” (1985), key examples of a rarely seen body of late work.  A selection of graphic collages, in which the artist transformed scraps of cardboard, foil, wood, metal, newsprint, and other found materials into lyrical abstractions, shed light on a lesser known but essential aspect of her practice. Tearing and combining these varied materials, Nevelson developed an aesthetic of fragmentation and re-assembly that animated the spirit of all her work as an artist. Her work in collage began in the early 1950s and continued until the time of her death. Nevelson kept this work mostly secret during her lifetime, preferring to exhibit her sculptural works. Nevelson’s work in collage opened new avenues for her explorations of light, shadow, reflection, and especially color. Deeply interwoven with her sculptural practice, collage-making was a daily act for the artist, who treated the medium almost like drawing.

Photo: Louise Nevelson, Moon Phases-Day, Executed in 1969-1980, wood construction, painted black, 36 x 86 x 9 in. (91.4 x 218.4 x 22.9 cm.), © 2023 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy Estate of Louise Nevelson and Pace Gallery

Info: Pace Gallery, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 11/3-29/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/