Sculptor Louise Berliawsky Nevelson (1899–1988) made her own world. A world filled with mystery and fierce originality. Born in Kiev, Russia, she was a child when her family emigrated to Rockland, Maine.

“I adored my parents,” she recalled. “My mother was free-thinking and had strong socialist ideas. My father believed in equal rights for women.”

By first grade, she sensed her path: “I already knew the pattern of my life. I didn’t know the living of it, but I knew the line.” Art was her constant. “From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.”

Influenced by Cubism, African sculpture, Matisse, and Picasso, Nevelson became known for constructing massive wall-like installations—assemblages of stacked “boxes” made from found wood, cast metal, and recycled materials. She painted them black, the color she called “the essence of the universe.”

Critics described her dramatic abstract art as both mysterious and architectural. About her use of discarded materials, she once said, “I think what people call by the word ‘scavenger’ is really a resurrection.”

Nevelson spent the first half of her life studying art and struggling for recognition. She was 40 before her first solo exhibition—and in her 60s before her art could financially support her.

“I never feel age. If you have creative work, you don’t have age or time,” she explained. Fierce in voice and vision, she believed deeply in self-expression. Crowned the Empress of Modern Art, she declared, “It’s a hell of a thing to be born, and if you’re born, you’re at least entitled to your own self.”