Architects of Being: The Creative Lives of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina - Hardcover

by Catherine Walworth (Author)

Born just nine years apart in Ukraine and Siberia, respectively, Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina were both children of Jewish families who fled Russian governmental repression and conflict. Both made early marriages of convenience or convention that were short-lived. Both went to New York in the 1920s, struggling to become artists amid the Great Depression. Both overcame the accepted modes of making, moving between art forms in expansive, category-defying ways. The parallels are poignant, including their similarly fearless devotion to abstract art in an era that had yet to fully embrace it. Architects of Being pays homage to these two women who were direct and dauntless.

Fittingly, this book draws its title from Nevelson's insight that "there's something very important about character: character is structure. Character is the architecture of the being." The connection between inner self and outward manifestation--both one's art and one's self-fashioning--is at the heart of Architects of Being. This richly illustrated and expertly researched exhibition catalog celebrates Nevelson's and Slobodkina's artistic journeys and architectural affinities, expanding our understanding of how these pioneering figures dissolved boundaries between art forms in ways that prefigured what we see throughout the art world today.

Author Biography

Catherine Walworth is the Jackye and Curtis Finch, Jr., Curator of Drawings at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the author of Soviet Salvage: Imperial Debris, Revolutionary Reuse, and Russian Constructivism.

Adrienne Montare is a licensed architect, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and former executive director of AIA South Carolina.

Chelsea Pierce is McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Lisa Hayes Williams is curator and head of exhibitions at the New Britain Museum of American Art.