Nightscape XII

Louise Nevelson is well known for her dynamic sculptures composed of wooden elements the artist salvaged from the streets of New York, assembled within a grid of rectangular wood crates, and cohered by painting a uniform color (often black). Nevelson emerged onto the New York art scene in the 1950s. The work proposed for acquisition is from the Nightscape series, created in 1974, and would be the most recent sculpture by the artist to enter the Chazen collection. There it will complement a number of other sculptures by the artist from the late 1950s and 1960s. In the Nightscape series (and others of the mid-1970s, such as the City Series), Nevelson explored surface rather than depth. In Nightscape, she arranged flat cut-out forms (often curvilinear) atop the rectangular grid. In the early 1970s, the artist had begun working with metal in the creation of a series of outdoor installations; perhaps these flat curvilinear elements arose from her experience working with Cor-ten steel.