Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life - Hardcover

Lisle, Laurie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671675168 ISBN 13: 9780671675165

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1990

Synopsis

Recounts the life of one of the most flamboyant artists of the twentieth century--including her immigration from czarist Russia, her brief marriage and controversial divorce, and her all-consuming struggle for recognition as an artist

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: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0671675168
• ISBN 13: 9780671675165
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352