Mirror Shadow XXIII
Artist
Louise Nevelson
(Ukrainian, 1899 - 1988)
Date1986
MediumPainted wood
Dimensions68 × 72 × 22 inches (172.7 × 182.9 × 55.9 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase.
Object number2023.13
On View
Not on view
Copyright© 2026 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextLouise Nevelson moved to New York City in 1920 to study art, and in the 1940s began producing the series of monumental wooden sculptures for which she became known. She collected scrap wood which she then stacked, assembled, and bolted into carefully framed compositions. Nevelson’s process of sculptural “constructions” was groundbreaking and challenged the notion of what type of art women in midcentury America could and should be making. She formally unified her work by painting her assemblages monochromatically to obscure the identity of the original objects. For Nevelson, black had a mystical sense of wholeness: It “is the total color. It means totality. It means: contains all.”
Nevelson’s series of Mirror-Shadows from the 1980s were unlike her more ordered and geometric wall reliefs of prior decades—these create dynamic diagonal movements that activate surrounding space. Self-titled the “Architect of Shadows,” she completed this work at 87, just two years before her death.