Louise Nevelson was a Russian-born American sculptor, who had an intense drive, an abundance of physical energy, and a powerful need to prove herself and her worth to the world. She exhibited her work for twenty-five years without making a sale, didn’t have her first solo exhibit until she was forty-two years old, and didn’t get her big break until her work was included in a 1958 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art when Louise was almost sixty. Nevelson got by financially thanks to her family supplying her with money or occasional gifts from her lovers. Her brother even gave her a monthly allowance. She never had a day job!
After years of making small and medium-sized sculptures from salvaged pieces of wood, she started to build massive carved wooden walls and really invented the field of environmental sculpture. Nevelson became more confident in her work and also prolific, producing about sixty sculptures a year.
By the late 1950’s, her home was filled with approximately nine hundred sculptures. An art critic, Hilton Kramer, visited her town house around this time and recalled that it was a strange home. The interior was stripped of everything – not only furniture and common things found in daily living, but even mundane necessities. Sculptures occupied every space, every wall, making divisions between rooms seem to dissolve in endless sculpture. He wondered where anyone took a bath in the house, because bathtubs, too, were filled with sculpture. Louise was able to enjoy her late-life renown, and dressed in outrageous wardrobes of flowing dresses, mink eyelashes, statement-piece jewelry, and elaborate headscarves.
Her sustaining force always was that she loved her work. She once said, “In my studio I am as happy as a cow in her stall. My studio is the only place where everything is right.”
*Note: Nevelson often would work for two to three days straight without any sleep and didn’t pay attention to food much, being fine with a can of sardines and a cup of tea with a piece of stale bread.