Louise Nevelson

Louise Nevelson (born 1899) was an American sculptor best known for her monochromatic wooden assemblages. Her family emigrated to the United States a few years after her birth, Nevelson moved to New York in 1920 and enrolled in the Art Students League in 1929.

Like many other artists in the 1930s, she was employed by the Works Progress Administration, first assisting Diego Rivera on his mural Portrait of America and later teaching at the Educational Alliance School of Art. In 1959 Nevelson participated in her first important museum exhibition, Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Martha Jackson Gallery gave her a solo show. She was included in the Venice Biennale in 1962. Her first major museum retrospective took place in 1967 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

Today, her works are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Nevelson remains one of the most important figures in 20th-century American sculpture.