Louise Nevelson
Born 1899 in Kiev, Russia (present-day Kyiv, Ukraine); died 1988 in New York City
From Wikipedia:
Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899–April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine), she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school, as she spoke Yiddish at home.
By the early 1930s she was attending art classes at the Art Students League of New York, and in 1941 she had her first solo exhibition. Nevelson experimented with early conceptual art using found objects, and dabbled in painting and printing before dedicating her lifework to sculpture. Usually created out of wood, her sculptures appear puzzle-like, with multiple intricately cut pieces placed into wall sculptures or independently standing pieces, often 3-D. The sculptures are typically painted in monochromatic black or white.
A prominent figure in the international art scene, Nevelson participated in the 31st Venice Biennale. Her work has been included in museum and corporate collections in Europe and North America. Nevelson remains one of the most important figures in 20th-century American sculpture.
From artnet.com:
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor best known for her monochromatic wooden assemblages. During the 1950s, she began to create unique arrangements contained in wooden frames amassed from a range of found objects—usually woodcuts or bits of furniture—that were then painted a uniform black, white, or gold, as seen in her seminal work Royal Tide I (1960). “I think most artists create out of despair,” Nevelson observed. “The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.” Born Leah Berliawsky on September 23, 1899 in Pereyaslav, Russian Empire (now Ukraine). Her family emigrated to the United States a few years after her birth, Nevelson moved to New York in 1920 and enrolled in the Art Students League in 1929. She went on to study with Hans Hofmann and worked as an assistant for Diego Rivera before her first solo at Nierendorf Gallery in 1941. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York gave the artist her first retrospective in 1967. Nevelson died on April 17, 1988, in New York, NY at the age of 88. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.
