Louise Nevelson

Louise Nevelson
(American, 1899-1988)
Dawn's Forest, 1986
Painted balsa-plywood
Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum , 2010.7
Gift of Georgia Pacific-Met Life, a joint venture
Georgia-Pacific, LLC.
Dawn’s Forest is Louise Nevelson’s largest, most
complex environmental sculpture and her last
major work.
Created in the artist’s signature assemblage
style, the monumental sculpture is made of
various white-painted abstract wood elements.
The work’s monochromatic color gives a sense
of unity to its disparate objects, the white
finish suggestive of the untainted possibilities
that dawn brings to each day. The tree-like
Photo courtesy of Diana MacKown
standing columns, as tall as 25 feet, and vertical
hanging pieces, underscore the forest-like
atmosphere, allowing the viewer to walk under the “trees” as well as through them.
Nevelson worked on Dawn’s Forest for more than a year, completing it in the spring of
1986. It is unusual among her environmental sculptures because of its size and its color;
most of her other large works were painted black. Commissioned by Georgia-Pacific and
MetLife, Dawn’s Forest was displayed at the Georgia-Pacific Center in Atlanta from
1986 until 2010. It was gifted to the Naples Museum of Art in 2010. It has never before
been seen in a museum setting.
Born in Kiev, Russia in 1899, Louise Nevelson immigrated to the United States in 1905. She
grew up in Rockland, Maine and later moved to New York City, where she lived most of
her life. After a brief marriage and the birth of a son, Nevelson went to Munich to study
art with Hans Hofmann. She returned to New York in 1932 and fully committed herself
to her art.
Nevelson is widely recognized as one of the pre-eminent American artists of the last half of
the 20th century. A pioneer of installation art, she struggled for decades in nearobscurity before winning widespread recognition in her 60s. By the late 1970s, ARTnews
proclaimed “Louise Nevelson’s name is probably recognized more than that of any other
American artist.”
In the 1970s and ’80s, Nevelson became known for her monumental Cor-ten steel public
sculptures, which can be seen today around the country. In 1977, Louise Nevelson Plaza
opened in lower Manhattan, the first public space in New York City named after an
artist. Recently renovated, Louise Nevelson Plaza now features six 20-foot-tall sculptures
and a 70-foot sculpture.
For her contributions to American culture, Nevelson was honored in 1985 by President
Ronald Reagan as one of the first recipients of the National Medal of Arts award.