Sky Gate IV

Louise Nevelson's grandfather and father both worked in the lumber industry, and she grew up playing and working with pieces of wood. She was determined to become an artist at an early age, and in 1931 studied in Munich with painter Hans Hofmann, later working with him in New York, and additionally assisted Mexican artist Diego Rivera with works in the 1930s.

Nevelson subsequently began working with found objects, pieces of wood, and boxes, which she assembled and painted black, obscuring their origins and melding the whole into a composite influenced by Cubism and contemporary practices such as assemblage and action painting. Her first one-woman show was in 1941 at Nierendorf Gallery in New York, and from accounts at the time, she conceived of the installation as "a prehistoric cave, an Egyptian tomb, or an unusually well-conceived shop window," showing a flair for environmental as well as spatial constructions.

The AMAM's work, Sky Gate IV, displays the darkness, deep shadows, and profound sense both of solid construction and enigmatic mystery of many of Nevelson's works. It is one of three Nevelson sculptures owned by the AMAM; the others are Box with Door of 1958, and the diminutive Slide #19 of 1967.