Born in Kiev, Russia, on September 23, 1900 (or perhaps 1899), Louise Berliawsky came to the United States with her parents in 1905 and grew up in Rockland, Maine. She graduated from high school in 1918, and in 1920 she married Charles S. Nevelson, with whom she settled in New York City. (They were later divorced.) In New York she began taking lessons in voice, dramatics, and painting, gradually concentrating on the last. In 1928╨1930 she was a student at the Art Students╒ League, and in 1931 she studied under Hans Hofmann in Munich. In 1932-1933 she was an assistant to Diego Rivera, who was then engaged in painting a mural for the New Workers╒ School. In the latter year her own works of sculpture were first exhibited in New York. She was represented in a group show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1935 and had her first woman show at the Nierendorf Gallery in 1940. Her early works in stone, plaster, terra cotta, metals, and wood displayed striking originality in design and handling of materials, and her larger abstract pieces often revealed in architectural affinity for Aztec or Mayan forms.
By the middle 1950s Nevelson╒s characteristic sculptures had evolved: ╥assemblages,╙ multilayered, complex, and frequently large, built up of wood and sometimes other materials (typically in the form of found objects) and painted white, black, or gold. On her use of boxes and square shapes she said, ╥I was born with that objective form in me and I never wanted to try to improve it.╙ Her several shows at the Nierendorf were followed by exhibits at the Norlyst and Grand Central Moderns galleries, from which leading museums began to acquire her works for their permanent collections. She was represented in the ╥Nature in Abstraction╙ show at the Whitney Museum, New York City, in 1958, in the ╥Sixteen Americans╙ show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959, at the Venice Biennale in 1962, at Documenta III in Kassel, Germany, in 1964, and in numerous other shows. In 1967 a major retrospective of her work was mounted at the Whitney.
Among Nevelson╒s major commissions were those for sculptures for the South Mall, Albany, New York, 1968; for the World Trade Center, New York City, 1978; and for St. Peter╒s Lutheran Church, New York, where she created the Erol Beker Chapel of the Good Shepherd in 1977. Titles of her more celebrated pieces included ╥Black Majesty,╙ ╥Sky Cathedral,╙ ╥Royal Game,╙ Homage to 6,000,000,╙ ╥America╤New York Blue,╙ ╥Night Zag I,╙ ╥Homage to the World,╙ ╥Tropical Rain Forest,╙ and ╥Mrs. N╒s Palace,╙ the last a room-size sculptural environment exhibited in 1977 after 13 years of work on it. In 1979 she created an environment of her black sculpture in Louise Nevelson Plaza in Manhattan. She worked continually until her death, completing a 35-foot black steel sculpture in 1988 for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Louise Nevelson was widely known for her unique costumes and personal adornments as well as for her other artistic achievements. Acknowledged as a major innovator in the field of sculpture, she was the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her work. She died on April 17, 1988, at her home in New York City.
