Louise Nevelson, Pioneer of Environmental Art, Dies

Louise Nevelson, who turned scavenged balusters, bedposts and odd bits of wood into masterpieces of modern sculpture, died Sunday night. She was 88.

Nevelson was a serious artist for half a century, but her work was largely ignored until the late 1950s. At her death, the pioneer of environmental art was one of the world’s preeminent women artists.

Nevelson, who had been in poor health for several months, died at her home in Manhattan’s SoHo district.

Nevelson’s unique and easily recognizable work commanded attention--as did Nevelson, whose gaunt yet handsome face was customarily highlighted by heavy false eyelashes, her hair turbaned.

Bethesda Sculpture

She remained active almost to the end, having recently finished a 35-foot black steel sculpture being installed at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. A show of her 1950s work is scheduled for this summer at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

The artist was perhaps best known for black-on-black wood boxes assembled from “found” objects put together in unusual ways. She also worked in white and in gold, but invariably in monochromes.

In later years, Nevelson used metal and plexiglass as well as wood.

Some of the later works were of staggering size--huge assemblages of geometric and architectural forms in wood or steel painted black. Her “Mrs. N’s Palace,” on which she spent almost 14 years, covered an entire room.

Her artworks, small and large, are represented in museums coast to coast. Her 33-ton sculpture “Night Sail” dominates Los Angeles’ Crocker Center entrance.

She was born Louise Berliawsky in Kiev, in the Ukraine, in September, 1899. Her father emigrated to the United States in 1902 and set up a successful timber company in Rockland, Me.

Studied With Rivera

In 1920 she married Charles Nevelson, a shipowner’s son, and moved to New York City, where she studied art with Mexican muralist Diego Rivera after taking brief courses in singing. They had one son, Myron, and separated in 1931.

The same year, near the end of her two-year apprenticeship with Rivera, she gave her first exhibition of sculpture. The Aztec overtones of some of her abstracts showed the influence of her teacher.

Nevelson then went to study in Europe, including among her teachers Hans Hiffmann in Munich, until the rise of Nazism in Germany.

It was not until her 60th year in 1959 that Nevelson was recognized as a major artist with “Dawn’s Wedding Feast.”