Louise Nevelson, Untitled (#9577)

ca. 1970

Surrealism continued to linger in American art after the 1940s influencing artists such as Louise Nevelson who assembled this box with found objects as a miniature theatrical stage. Her materials were found pieces of wood—stray bits of molding, battered planks, balusters, dowels, finials—anything that she felt had character. She arranged these abstract forms in shallow boxes and sprayed them with flat black paint as in this hinged-lid box sculpture.