ROME.- The exhibition Louise Nevelson, promoted by the Fondazione Roma, organised by the Fondazione Roma-Arte-Musei with Arthemisia Group and held in the Museo Fondazione Roma situated in Palazzo Sciarra, will be open to the public from the 16th April to the 21st July 2013. The exhibition, supported by the American Embassy in association with the Nevelson Foundation of Philadelphia and the Fondazione Marconi of Milan, will show over 70 works by the American sculptor of Russian origin, Louise Berliawsky Nevelson (Pereyaslav-Kiev, 1899; New York, 1988).

Professor Emanuele, Chairman of the Fondazione Roma says “With this exhibition dedicated to Louise Nevelson, the Museo Fondazione Roma confirms its commitment to spread international culture and allow the public at large to become acquainted with less known artists who were not however less important for the progress of art during the twentieth century. Our tribute to this American sculptor is another stage of our journey beyond the artistic borders of our country, which fully represents the identity of the Fondazione Roma, its values, openness to others, constant attention to the circulation of ideas and inter-cultural dialogue.”

The Chairman of the Fondazione Roma concludes “This exhibition pays special attention to female artists, focusing on the personality and figurative traits of those exponents who significantly contributed to contemporary art. This project was launched with the retrospective on Niki de Saint Phalle in 2009 and continued with the exhibition focused on Georgia OʼKeeffe held in 2011.”

This retrospective, curated by Bruno Corà, illustrates the artistʼs contribution to the development of the notion of plastic: her works occupy an important place in twentieth century sculpture and are classified amongst those experiences which, following the historic avant-gardes of Futurism and Dadaism, assiduously used found objects and fragments in their compositions. The use of materials and objects in works of art - raised to an important artistic language by Picasso, Duchamp, Schwitters and other sculptors - and the assemblages (often found also in African sculptures) considerably influenced the young artist at the beginning of her career. Louise Nevelson, emigrated with her family to the United States in 1905 where they settled in Rockland – Maine and together with Louise Bourgeois, inevitably marked American art in the XX century.

In an emblematic layout, the exhibition illustrates the artistʼs work starting from the nineteen-thirties with drawings and terracottas and is subsequently enhanced through her sculptures such as the assemblages in painted wood created during the nineteen fifties, several masterpieces from the sixties and seventies and significant mature works produced during the eighties. The works belong to the collections of important national and international institutions and museums such as the Louise Nevelson Foundation, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek - Denmark, the Centre national des arts plastiques in France, the Pace Gallery of New York and the Fondazione Marconi.

The group exhibition “Quʼest-ce que la sculpture modern?” held in 1986 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, classified Louise Nevelson amongst the greatest sculptors of the XX century. The artist worked until she died in New York City on 17th April 1988. Her works have been acquired by famous museums and private collectors both in the United States and throughout the world.

Arranged in groups of works, the exhibition enables visitors to understand Louise Nevelsonʼs artistic evolution in a chronologic and thematic order.

The small artefacts placed in the first galleries prove that the artist already used black in the early nineteen forties. The next galleries contain several works from the early nineteen fifties - such as Moon Spikes n.112 (1953) and Moon Spikes IV (1955) – and works from the artistʼs more mature period in the late fifties and early sixties, including Night Sun I (1959), Royal Tide III (1960, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk - Denmark) and Ancient Secrets II (1964). These works show how her freedom in composition, by assembling unfinished geometric elements, changed by placing fragments of furniture into box structures. Uniform black dominates all these works.

Seven drawings dated from 1930 to 19333 are exhibited: these are essential to her poetics since drawing is the fundamental concept of Nevelsonʼs works.

Her mimetic stroke becomes certain as she seeks further spatiality and the female figures she depicts, as in Untitled (Female Nude, 1933), seem to symbolize compositional freedom. Her association with the claims of the historic avantgardes, which she discovered whilst travelling to Europe in 1931 and 1932 and in the art schools she attended or through European artists living in New York, is evident.

The ceramics produced in the same period, such as the Untitled painted terracotta dated 1935, confirm her interest in Cubism and Surrealism in addition to the Pre-Colombian anthropomorphic artefacts transmitted by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo who she frequented in New York in 1933.

Three serigraphs from the mid-nineteen seventies beside the drawings document Louiseʼs interest in graphics, which she started to study in 1947 at Stanley William Hayterʼs famous Atelier 17 in New York. This was an important experience during which she developed unconventional printing techniques using personal procedures and experimental compositions.

In 1963 she worked as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles, where she developed new techniques and added chalcographic reliefs and bright chromatic planes to materials, such as cuttings and lace, creating increasingly more valuable prints.

Again from this period are the horizontal and vertical works in black wood, examples of assemblages on twodimensional rectangular stands, such as Untitled 1976-1978, in which the objects - geometrical pieces of furniture - are placed side by side seeking balance.

Vertical assemblages from the early nineteen eighties close the first part of the exhibition. The volumes of these sculptures emphasize their three-dimensionality, more than in any other case in which the artist used vertical forms. A blue light illuminates the gallery in which these works are housed, creating a particular view of the sculpture and emphasising the metaphysical meaning.

In the fifth gallery the artistʼs constant use of black is contrasted by several works painted entirely in white, a colour which places more emphasis on the relationship between light and shadow: the sculpture entitled Dawnʼs Host (1959), a conspicuous white disc, proves her transition to this colour in the late nineteen fifties.

Her white sculptures were first shown to the public in 1959 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where she displayed the Dawn's Wedding Feast group: a huge installation centred on the wedding theme, composed of various elements. Parts of the work have in time been acquired by several collections, even though Nevelson had conceived it as a single installation. The exhibition in Rome, reunites two pieces entitled Columns from Dawn's Wedding Feast dated 1959, belonging to The Menil Collection in Houston.

Black gives the sculptures a sense of monumentality, whereas the white hue signaled a more serene viewpoint for the artist who said “when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn't a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all. The only aristocratic color. “For me, the black contains the silhouette, the essence of the universe. But the white moves out a little bit into outer space with more freedom.”

Works from the nineteen seventies and eighties, including Sky-Zag IX (1974), are housed in the same hall and compared with photographs of large outdoor installations produced during this period such as Dawn Shadows (1982) erected in Madison Plaza, Chicago, and Frozen Laces-Four (1976-80) in Madison Avenue, New York. Louise Nevelson started to produce a series of outdoor installations, also in tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, which may still be seen throughout the world, even though she hated being unable to create the works directly by hand due to their monumental size.

The next gallery houses the major work by Louise Nevelson included in the exhibition – Homage to the Universe (1968) – which, being nine meters long, is also the largest. Influenced by her production of monumental outdoor installations, the artist increased the scale of works such as this.

Six large collages of various sizes, such as the Untitled dated 1985 circa and the Untitled dated 1985 circa, which represent a particular series are also exhibited. The two-dimensionality, the lack of uniform colouring and the cut-out shapes, show her attention to the perspective planes produced in the overlapping elements. The Cubist lesson resurfaces and mingles with her multi-dimensional experience.

In the next gallery, the poetics and lyricism of the volumes and shapes of works such as Tropical Landscape I (1975) are placed beside a poster of New York City which the artist had always loved. The geometric composition and simplicity of Louise Nevelsonʼs works resemble the artistic production of the contemporary minimalist generation in the Unites States.

Works in gold such as The Golden Pearl (1962), Royal Winds (1960) and Golden Gate (1961-70) that date back to the early nineteen sixties close the exhibition. The artist attributed her interest in this colour to the tale told by Russian emigrants that America's streets were "paved with gold", but also to alchemy and the luxurious gold in ancient art: “Gold is a metal that reflects the great sun. [...] Consequently I think why gold came after the black and white is a natural. Really I was going back to the elements. Shadow , light, the sun, the moon." Black, white and gold played a fundamental role in Louise Nevelsonʼs life. She separated her collections and installations by colour and even in her studio she worked in different rooms for each colour.

In the American Pavilion of the XXXI Venice Biennale art exhibition, held in 1962, she dedicated one hall to gold, one to black and one to white and arranged the installations accordingly. The halls were illuminated solely by natural light filtering through the curtains hanging from the ceiling, thus creating an atmosphere which astonished and enthused the critics.

Many original period photographs are shown throughout the exhibition, such as the famous portrait of Louise Nevelson taken by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1986, and the photos taken by Enrico Cattaneo in 1973 during the exhibition held in the Studio Marconi in Milan and by Pedro E. Guerrero in 1979-80. Visitors may also enjoy a documentary-interview showing the artist in action in her studio and investigating several interesting aspects of the fascinating work as a sculptor.