Pace Prints to Present Louise Nevelson a Career Spanning Exhibition of Prints, Editions, and Multiples by the Pioneering Artist Opening June 13, 2025.
Pace Prints is pleased to announce Louise Nevelson an exhibition of lithographs, aquatint etchings, cast paper reliefs, and sculptural multiples celebrating the decades long relationship between Pace Prints and the artist. The exhibition will be on view from June 13–July 5, 2025, at 536 West 22nd Street, and coincides with a solo presentation of Nevelson's work currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Renowned for her assemblages built with found materials scavenged from the streets of New York City, Nevelson’s sculptures incorporated combinations of materials and forms that manifested in her distinctive approach to abstraction. Similarly, the artist pushed the boundaries of the print medium, refreshing traditional forms, while expanding the possibilities of what a print or multiple could be.
The exhibition presents some of Nevelson’s earliest experiments with etching from the mid-1950’s, including Archaic Figure (1953-1955) and Magnificent Jungle Cats (1953-1955).
Created in 1967 at the Tamarind Institute, Nevelson’s large-scale print Double Imagery (2170/2170A) distinguishes itself through a technique of using black and red inked cheesecloth applied to a lithographic stone to create a unique depth in both form and color.
Throughout the 1970’s, Nevelson’s printed works began to incorporate larger and bolder swaths of color. In her Aquatint Portfolio from 1973, the use of color and texture projects spatial relationships heightened by the dark plane of the backgrounds. This inclusion of color as a new dimension in her printed works is epitomized in the luminous Celebration Portfolio from 1979, featuring six brightly colored aquatint etchings.
Nevelson continued her investigation of material, creating a series of lead intaglio relief prints. In Night Sound (1971) and Sky Shadow (1973), thin embossed metal plates are applied as sculptural elements to the paper.
Exploding her editions into three-dimensional space, Nevelson’s paper pulp reliefs and polyester cast-resin multiples of the 1970s and early 1980s represent the convergence of the artist’s sculptural and printmaking practices. Created by pressing wet pulp into a mold, Dawn’s Presence and Moon Garden (Black) from 1976 are at once, both print and sculpture, while cast-resin multiples like Night Blossom (1973) and Full Moon (1980), represent the closest analog to Nevelson’s wooden sculptures.
Louise Nevelson (b. 1899; d. 1988) has been the subject of over 70 one-artist exhibitions, including over ten traveling exhibitions, held at institutions worldwide including The Jewish Museum, New York (1965, 2007); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1967, 1970, 1980, 1987, 1998, 2018, 2025); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1973, 2017); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986); and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1997). Her work has been collected by major American institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; as well as abroad.
Pace Prints collaborated with Louise Nevelson in publishing her prints and multiples from the early 1970s until her passing in 1988. The Estate of Louise Nevelson is represented by the Pace Gallery. A forthcoming retrospective of the artist organized by the Centre Pompidou-Metz will open in France this coming fall.
