Louise Nevelson American, 1899-1988
Abstract Figure with Face, circa 1943
Tattistone
6 inches high x 14 inches wide x 5 1/4 inches deep
Incised "LN" on the reverse
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This sculpture was cast in Tattistone, an innovative medium developed by the sculptor Alexander Tatti and Louise Nevelson, consisting of an aggregate of marble dust, colored stone chips, and a...
This sculpture was cast in Tattistone, an innovative medium developed by the sculptor Alexander Tatti and Louise Nevelson, consisting of an aggregate of marble dust, colored stone chips, and a hardening agent. Tatti created the material while working in a WPA-supported studio on 39th Street in New York, where Louise Nevelson also produced many of her early sculptures. During this formative period, Nevelson's work reflects a profound engagement with Pre-Columbian art, shaped by her studies with Hans Hofmann in Europe and subsequent travels to Guatemala and Mexico. Her admiration for Mayan statuary, together with the Cubist sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, and their contemporaries, informed the bold, simplified forms of these early works. This fascination with African, Pre-Columbian, and Indian art was further reinforced by her childhood exposure to American Indian artifacts in Rockland, Maine, her encounters with museum collections in New York and Paris, her friendship with Wolfgang Paalen and his writings in the Surrealist journal Dyn, and her apprenticeship with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in 1933. Today, the significance of this early body of work is underscored by the presence of related Tattistone sculptures in the collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine.
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