I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it’s a painful, difficult search within.

Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

Sky Landscape 1977-79

 

Louise Berliawsky Nevelson (born Leah Berliawsky, September 23, 1899, Kiev, Czarist Russia – d. April 17, 1988, New York, New York) was a Russian-born American artist.

Nevelson is known for her abstract expressionist “crates” grouped together to form a new creation. She used found objects or everyday discarded things in her “assemblages” or assemblies, one of which was three stories high: ”When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created.” Louise married Charles Nevelson after she graduated from high school in 1918, and together they had a child named Myron Nevelson. Louise and Charles later separated in 1931.

Mercedes Ruehl played Nevelson in Edward Albee’s play “Occupant” at the Signature Theater in New York in summer 2008.

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