Louise Nevelson - Early Personal Life

Early Personal Life

Louise Nevelson was born Leah Berliawsky in 1899 in Perislav, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, to Minna Sadie and Isaac Berliawsky, a contractor and lumber merchant. Even though the family lived comfortably, Nevelson's relatives had begun to leave the Russian Empire for America in the 1880s. The Berliawskys had to stay behind, as Isaac, the youngest brother, had to care for his parents. While still in Europe, Minna gave birth to two of Nevelson's siblings: Nathan (born 1898) and Anita (1902). On his mother's death, Isaac moved to the United States in 1902. After he left, Minna and the children moved to the Kiev area. According to family lore, young Nevelson was so forlorn about her father's departure that she became mute for six months.

In 1905 Minna and the children emigrated to the United States, where they joined Isaac in Rockland, Maine. Isaac initially struggled to establish himself there, suffering from depression while the family settled into their new home. He worked as a woodcutter before opening a junkyard. Eventually he became a successful lumberyard owner and realtor. The family had another child, Lillian, in 1906. Nevelson was very close to her mother, who suffered from depression, a condition believed to be brought on by the family's migration from Russia and their minority status as a Jewish family living in Maine. Minna overly compensated for this, dressing herself and the children up in clothing "regarded as sophisticated in the Old Country". Her mother wore flamboyant outfits with heavy make-up; Nevelson described her mother's "dressing up" as "art, her pride, and her job", also describing her as someone who should have lived "in a palace".

Nevelson's first experience of art was at the age of nine at the Rockland Public Library, where she saw a plaster cast of Joan of Arc. Shortly thereafter she decided to study art, taking drawing in high school, where she also served as basketball captain. She painted watercolor interiors, in which furniture appeared molecular in structure, rather like her later professional work. Female figures made frequent appearances. In school, she practiced her English, her second language, as Yiddish was spoken at home. Unhappy with her family's economic status, language differences, the religious discrimination of the community, and her school, Nevelson set her sights on moving to high school in New York.

She graduated from high school in 1918, and began working as a stenographer at a local law office. There she met Bernard Nevelson, co-owner with his brother Charles of the Nevelson Brothers Company, a shipping business. Bernard introduced her to his brother, and Charles and Louise Nevelson were married in June 1920 in a Jewish wedding at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. Having satisfied her parent's hope that she would marry into a wealthy family, she and her new husband moved to New York City, where she began to study painting, drawing, singing, acting and dancing. She also became pregnant, and in 1922 she gave birth to her son Myron (later called Mike), who grew up to be a sculptor. Nevelson studied art, despite the disapproval of her parents-in-law. She commented: "My husband's family was terribly refined. Within that circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven."

In 1924 the family moved to Mount Vernon, New York, a popular Jewish area of Westchester County. Nevelson was upset with the move, which removed her from city life and her artistic environment. During the winter of 1932–1933 she separated from Charles, unwilling to becoming the socialite wife he expected her to be. She never sought financial support from Charles, and in 1941 the couple divorced.