Immigrant of the Day: Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

Louise Berliawsky Nevelson (born Leah Berliawsky, September 23, 1899, Kiev, Ukraine; died April 17, 1988, New York) was one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century, whose works can be found in almost every major museum in Europe and America. Her sculptures included wood assemblages typically painted in either jet black or, later, in white and gold as well, ranged in size from the small and personal to the large and monumental.

Nevelson is known for her abstract expressionist “boxes” grouped together to form a new creation. She used found objects or everyday discarded things in her “assemblages” or assemblies, one of which was three stories high.

Born in 1899 to a Jewish timber merchant in the Ukraine, Leah (as she was originally known) migrated to the United States around 1905 after her father's business brought him to Rockland, Maine. Reports suggest the young girl played with timber almost from the time she arrived in Maine, and set her sights on becoming a sculptor by age ten.

In 1929 Nevelson enrolled at the Art Students League of New York. In the early 1930s she worked with renowned Mexican painter and political activist Diego Rivera at the New Workers School in New York. During this period she worked as an art teacher with the New Deal's WPA. During the 1940s she showed five major exhibitions revealing the influences of surrealism and collage. In her 1958 show, Moon Garden + One, walls of wood collages surrounded the viewer in darkened rooms. This helped secure her reputation as a pioneering American environmental artist. During the following two decades, Nevelson--known for her forceful public personality, a flamboyant style of dress, and her trademark false eyelashes--exhibited widely throughout the major art centers of the world and received many public commissions.

To commemorate her work, the Louise Nevelson Plaza in Lower Manhattan, an entire outdoor garden of her metal collages, was established in 1978 and dedicated in 1979.

Nevelson died in her home in 1988, but has retained her reputation as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. She has been commemorated on a number of postage stamps.

KJ