Galerie Gmurzynska is pleased to present an exhibition of nearly forty works by Louise Nevelson (1899-1988). True Strength is Delicate is currently on view at Spring Place Beverly Hills. The opening reception is on September 28th, 2021, the works will be on view through January 15th, 2022.
Born one year before the turn of the century, Nevelson had always aspired to artistic pursuits, and moved to New York City in 1920, completely immersing herself in the world of art. True Strength is Delicate includes works from 1956-1983. Each of these exemplifies Nevelson’s use of found materials in her artwork. While a staple material for Nevelson was reclaimed wood, many of these pieces make use of other found materials and objects as well—including cardboard, metal, glass, corkboard, newsprint, foil, and sandpaper—all of which Nevelson arranged thoughtfully within each piece to create a visual harmony of shape, color, and texture, whether it be a free-standing sculpture or a wall piece.
Some of the best-known pieces in Nevelson’s oeuvre are her large scale, monochromatic assemblages. In Untitled, 1976-78, one can clearly see the found objects taking on a different role within the composition to create a perfectly balanced three-dimensional collage. Louise Nevelson came to love the color black and viewed it as a combination of all the colors, referring to it as “the most aristocratic color of all.” Further, Nevelson embraced the air of drama, mystery, and spirituality that black added to her work.
However, Nevelson certainly wasn’t limited by her love for black. Born in the Ukraine and having immigrated to America as a small child, she was told that the streets “would be paved with gold.” In the early 1960s, Nevelson began constructing works with the color gold, including Untitled, 1960. The association from her early years clearly remained with her over the decades, until she, ironically enough, picked up discarded wood off the street and transformed it into these bright gold works of art.
Louise Nevelson continually created strong, meditative beauty out of the unexpected and Galerie Gmurzynska is delighted to share this selection of pieces that demonstrate just that. True Strength is Delicate is the gallery’s fifth exhibition of the artist’s work since 1995. Galerie Gmurzynska has produced two books on Nevelson: Silent Music and The Way I Think is Collage, published in 1995 and 2012, respectively.
“My work is delicate; it may look strong, but it is delicate.
True strength is delicate. My whole life is in it.”
– Louise Nevelson
About Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor of Ukrainian descent, best known for her complex monochromatic assemblage sculptures usually made from reclaimed wood. At age six Nevelson immigrated with her father to Rockland, Maine from Ukraine. In 1920, she moved to New York and began to educate herself as an actress, pianist, dancer, singer and painter. She studied under Hans Hofmann at the Hofmann Schule für Moderne Kunst in Munich and the Art Students League in the United States, and also worked as a studio assistant to Diego Rivera. Through Hofmann, she became aware of Cubism, collage techniques, Surrealism, African art, American Indian art and Pre-Columbian art. In the 1940s, while many of her artistic peers – Alexander Calder, David Smith, Theodore Roszak – were welding metal to create their large-scale sculptures, Nevelson began producing Cubist figure studies in wood. In 1958 she was photographed and featured on the cover of Life magazine. Influenced by Duchamp's found-object sculptures, she sought to build abstract environments and impregnate them with a mysterious, spiritual narrative. In 1962 she was selected for the 31st Venice Biennale, and went on to win the Gold Medal Sculpture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983, and the National Medal of the Arts in 1985. Today, her assemblages are held in public collections including, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Tate Britain, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.