Reveling in Louise Nevelson's Printed Surfaces

I have known and admired the work of Louise Nevelson, but after reading her biography, I came to understand more about a strong-willed and powerful woman; one whose difficulties to pursue her art made her leave behind her husband and child, struggle for years without financial security and whose goal to be seen as an artist, not a ‘female’ artist, were ahead of the norm.

Discovering her prints was a pleasure, and as expected, their surfaces and the adventurous spirit with which she made them show us an artist truly forging her path toward innovation, and exploration to push the boundaries of a medium.  Nevelson’s prints tend in some degree to push visually toward cubism, as was her often heard credit to the influences of Picasso and Hofmann. She also pushed the printed medium with deeply embossed and etched plates, trying to make the paper bend to her will as she did with his found object sculptures. One can also see where her influences upon other notable painter/printmakers like Frank Stella and Jasper Johns occur.

The variety of her images reflects an consistent curiosity about tactile and rich surfaces and leaves us with an incontrollable desire to go put our hands on them. I am including a biography on Nevelson for those of you wanting to know more about a remarkable artist.

Louise Nevelson was born Leah Berliawsky (1899-1988) in Perislav , Poltava Governorate in the former Russian Empire. When she was three years old, her family emigrated to the United States, settling in Rockland, Maine, in 1905. She saw both of her parents suffer from depression, due in part to the adjustments to living in America, and being isolated in a small Jewish community. It was during high school that Nevelson decided to study art. Before moving to New York City, she married a wealthy businessman, Charles Nevelson, and they had one son, Myron(Mike), but her in-laws disapproved of her artistic interests and she eventually divorced  her husband in 1941.

In the 1930s Nevelson studied at the Art Students League of New York with Kimon Nicolaides and she went to Europe (Munich) to study with the renowned Hans Hoffmann. After returning to New York, Louise met and became an assistant to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She also studied with sculptor Chaim Gross. She continued to experiment with other artistic mediums, including lithography and etching,  but eventually decided sculpture would be her medium.

Nevelson worked for the WPA teaching art to children in Brooklyn until 1939. She exhibited her work in several smaller shows in the 1930s, received her first solo show at the Nierendorf Gallery in 1941. Her work consisted mainly of found objects and collage, speaking to her interests in Cubism and Surrealism. The scale of her work later grew to a monumental size, and when critics reviewed her pieces, it was praised until it was known Nevelson was a woman. A reviewer of her 1941 exhibition at Nierendorf Gallery stated: "We learned the artist is a woman, in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise, we might have hailed these sculptural expressions as by surely a great figure among moderns." Sexism being rampant in the art world, it wasn’t ready, it seemed, for a talented ‘female’ sculptor. Nevelson believed that art reflected the individual, and chose to take on her role as an artist, not specifically a female artist. “I'm not a feminist. I'm an artist who happens to be a woman.”  Her opinion of discrimination within the art world bordered on the belief that artists not gaining success based on their gender suffered moreso from a lack of confidence. 

Nevelson visited Latin America, and was inspired by ancient Mayan ruins and Guatemalan steles. Her 1958 series of exhibitions were highly praised, and in 1959 Nevelson was included in MoMA's Sixteen Americans exhibition alongside Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The scale of her sculptures and the influence of Latin American ancient art are credited as putting "Nevelson's sculpture in league with the grand scale of Abstract Expressionist painting, as well as the earlier mural painting of Rivera.” Nevelson took found objects and spray-painted them to disguise their original purposes. She gave credit to Picasso and Hofmann’s influence of Cubism as to her extensive use of discarded objects, and she was influenced by Native American art, dreams, and archetypes. 

From 1957 to 1958, she was president of the New York Chapter of Artists' Equity. That year, she was featured on the cover of Life magazine. In 1962 her work was selected for the 31st Venice Biennale, and from 1962 to1964 she became national president of Artists' Equity. In 1967 the Whitney Museum hosted the first retrospective of Nevelson's work, showing over one hundred pieces, including work from the 1930s to the late 60s, and four years later  the Walker Atr Center curated a major traveling exhibition of her work. 

 

Louise Nevelson Plaza, is located in downtown New York City and features a collection of her works. She donated her papers to the Archives of American Art The Farnsworth Art Museum, in Rockland, Maine, houses the second largest collection of her works.  Nevelson has a place-setting  in Judy Chicago's 1974–1979The Dinner Party^.. Upon her death, Nevelson’s estate was estimated to be worth at least $100 million. 

Awards:

National Medal of Arts

National Institute of Arts and Letters

American Academy of Arts and Letter Gold Medals

Creative Arts Award in Sculpture,  Brandeis University

Harvard University, honorary degree

Rutgers University, honorary degree

Grace Martin Taylor, Proponent for Modernism

Grace Martin Taylor (1903-1995) was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. She left Morgantown to study art at a number of institutions like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Carnegie Institute, West Virginia University and The Art Students League in New York. Taylor also studied with noted Modernist artists Arthur B. Carles, Hans Hoffmann, Emil Bisttram, and she studied for periods of time between 1925-1954 with her cousin, Blanche Lazzell, in Provincetown, MA.

Creative types can abound in families, although they tend to be seen more often in generational father-son lines, not necessarily in cousins. The Taylor/Lazzell clan also worked together for many years, but while each artist had their won look,  associations and visual connections can be drawn when comparing Taylor and Lazzell's work. 

Lazzell worked in a Japanese style woodblock printmaking method called the Provincetown print and she introduced it toTaylor. They often spent summers working together on these prints in Provincetown; the products of which are generally considered amongst both artists' finest works. In Taylor's case her sensibility for fractured still-lifes and landscapes show her clear preference for abstraction. She burgeons on a raw, more primitive side side of woodblocks when not making her more well-known Provincetown prints, but her color work is sophisticated and relatively intense when compared with her cousin.

Taylor was also known as a prolific artist and taught studio art at the university level. She spent her career in academia and was head of the art department and also president (1955-56) of the Mason College of Music and Fine Arts in Charleston, W.Va. (which is now known as the University of Charleston).She is credited with perpetuating modern art and abstraction in West Virginia

Taylor's works have been exhibited throughout the United States at several prestigious museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Smithsonian Institution, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and ACME Fine Art in Boston.

In 2008 Taylor's work was included in “The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock” at the British Museum in London, England.

Krishna Reddy's Prints Show Glimpses of the "Other" World

Krishna Reddy is an artist without end. What I mean is, he and his work have had a longevity and staying power that has lasted for decades. Reddy, an artist who originated from Andra Pradesh, in southern India, went on to study and work in London, Paris and the US. He has also been awarded with India's highest honor (the highly coveted Padma Shri) which is similar to a knighthood, for excellence in his field. His work has been exhibited internationally and he has traveled the globe as a teacher/guest artist to hundreds of universities and schools. The man can not stop, but the question is who would want him to?

"Butterfly forming" (above) is an example of the type of imagrey one can associate with Reddy's work. His pleasing compositions  of overlapping and integrated biomorphic forms, undulating colors and sumptuous surface are mesmerizing. Reddy's choices to deal with abtracted forms as a metaphor for one's internal struggles with spiritualism, and one's place in the world, isn't exactly a new message - but it is an eternal one.

 His work derives in spirit from the concepts brought about by Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism, but Reddy's work pushes through those ideas and  creates work that weaves its way through art periods and movements. There are visual components that resemble furniture designed by MacIntosh, and enlist the sweeping saga of one of  Joseph W. M. Turner's ship-versus-the-sea paintings. His web-like grids swing and warp out uniformity,  evolving into a visual push-pull and engaging us in the epic tactile battle like one finds in a Hans Hoffmann or Basquiat painting. Similarly his tight, illusionary depth mirrors and surpasses the ideas behind Aaron Siskind's abstract photographs. Truly, they are a sensory overload, but this master knows how and when to titllate and when to release us from his grasp. 

Reddy's work has visual and compositional references to other artists, like the surrealistic, internal mindscapes of Matta, and the linear prowess of Stanley William Hayter; an artist Reddy studied under and worked with at Atelier 17 in Paris. His rich, juicy surfaces propel his prints to rival the textural excessive qualities of painting and even sculpture. His mastery of color is nuanced and boldly applied when wanted,  and he understands well the emotional attachments found therein. The man know what its all about and what's more, he make it all seem so effortless and spontaneous - something we printmakers know is NOT the case with his type of prints and the years' and years' experience it takes to work with his multi-layered methodology.  

I am delighted to have found this artist to present to you, and hope you enjoy his work as much as I do.