A comprehensive look at Louise Nevelson's career as a pioneering sculptor Louise Nevelson (1900-1988) was a towering figure in postwar American art, exerting great influence with her monumental installations, innovative sculptures made of found objects, and celebrated public artworks. The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson focuses on all phases of the artist's remarkable ascent to the top of the art world, from her groundbreaking works of the 1940s to complex pieces completed in the late 1980s. The most extensive study of Nevelson to be published in over 20 years, this beautifully illustrated book also demonstrates how Nevelson's flamboyant style and carefully cultivated persona enhanced her reputation as an artist of the first rank. Essays by distinguished scholars examine a wide variety of important issues and themes throughout Nevelson's career, including the role of monochromatic color in her painted wooden sculpture; the art-historical context of her work; her acclaimed large-scale commissioned artworks, which established her as a central figure in the public art revival of the late 1960s; and her "self-fashioning" as a celebrated artist, particularly her origins as a Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant to the United States. An illustrated chronology and exhibition history accompany the text. Published in conjunction with the first major exhibition of Nevelson's work in America since 1980, this book provides essential information on and insights into the study of a revolutionary 20th-century artist. Published in association with The Jewish Museum Exhibition Schedule: The Jewish Museum, New York (May 5 - September 16, 2007) de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (October 27, 2007 - January 13, 2008)

"Louise Nevelson, now in her eightieth year, is one of our greatest contemporary American sculptors. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition in her honor at the Whitney Museum of American Art, is a tribute to her spirit, her work, and her ongoing achievements. Nevelson, who worked with little recognition for the first fifty years of her life, became known to the general public in the mid-fifties with an exhibition of wood sculptures called MOON GARDEN + ONE. Accumulations of painted wood fragments, boxed, stacked, hanging, dramatically lit, they inspired wonder, reverence, and awe. A prominent New York critic called the show "shocking, overwhelming...appalling, marvelous." MOON GARDEN + ONE, with its tremendous vitality and power, is presented here along with four other major environments: the all-white exhibition shown at The Museum of Modern Art, DAWN'S WEDDING FEAST; the all-gold environment, THE ROYAL TIDES; and an earlier exhibition, THE ROYAL VOYAGE, whose carved pieces and found objects, painted black and arranged together, led to the idea of sculptural walls. In contrast, the last work, MRS. N's PALACE, is a three-dimensional piece -- a house on a mirrored floor that the viewer can walk around and enter -- made up of myriad small works. The original environment-installations are pictured here, as are many of the individual sculptures that comprised them, introduced by art historian Laurie Wilson, with quotes by Mrs. Nevelson herself. Edward Albee, playwright and friend of Mrs. Nevelson, has written a fascinating introduction discussing the artist's life and her art in the context of the history of sculpture over the past fifty years. Photographer Pedro E. Guerrero takes the reader on a privileged tour of Mrs. Nevelson's home and studio." --