Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life - Softcover

Lisle, Laurie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595190693 ISBN 13: 9780595190690

Publisher: Iuniverse Inc, 2001

Synopsis

Now in a revised edition, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life is the only biography of this important 20th century American sculptor. From her birth in Russia, her girlhood in Maine, to her years as an artist in Manhattan, Nevelson's life was difficult, dramatic and, after years of struggle, finally triumphant. Her rich iconographyexpressed in black, white, and gold wooden assemblagesis an enormous and extraordinary prize-winning body of work found in parks, plazas, and museums throughout the world. "Lisle has conscientiously investigated the numerous bizarre events in Nevelson's long life" -Washington Post Book World "Lisle's book is impressive in its thoroughness . . . its eclectic introduction of psychological analysis" -Woman's Art Journal "Lisle's view of Nevelson's often ruthless behavior is both compassionate and clear-eyed . . . [and she] has constructed a colorful, rich study of Nevelson's creative evolution" -The Boston Sunday Herald

About this title

From the Author

When writing this book, I traveled to Maine, where Nevelson had grown up, and to Washington, DC, where the Archives of American Art holds many of her papers, but spent most of my time in Manhattan, where I looked at her work in museums and interviewed the artist herself.

From the Inside Flap

    Louise Nevelson, the most original and perhaps the most famous sculptor of the twentieth century, was a strikingly beautiful woman who lived so unconventional a life that by the time of her death in 1988 she had become a legend outside as well as inside the art world.
    Born Leah Berliawsky in a provincial Russian town near Kiev in 1899, she immigrated to America with her family when she was five. They settled in Rockland, Maine, where, as Jews and foreignors, they were ostracized. Louise, whose talent emerged early, grew up feeling alternatively superior and inferior.
   At twenty, to escape from Maine, she married a wealthy New Yorker and moved to Manhattan where she studied with some of the best art teachers of the time. As her dedication to art grew, she abandoned her husband and neglected her son--which caused her intense maternal guilt for the rest of her life. During the Depression, she joined other artists of her generation and worked for the Works Progress Administration.
   Although she had her first solo exhibition in 1941, her real success did not comne until she was almost sixty, after she had gone through a period of extreme poverty that brought her close to despair. She found inspiration in cubism, primitive art and her own unconscious, creating a rich iconography of images. With black, white, or gold paint and perfect placement, she transformed old pieces of wood and other objects she picked up on the street into powerful sculptures.

About this edition

• Publisher: Iuniverse Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0595190693
• ISBN 13: 9780595190690
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312