Lynn Gilbert · CC BY-SA 4.0

Louise Nevelson turned discarded wood — scrap furniture parts, packing crates, architectural fragments — into monumental wall sculptures and freestanding assemblages, unified by coats of monochromatic black or white paint that transformed found junk into something that reads as considered and whole. Born in the Russian Empire and raised in the United States after her family emigrated in 1905, she had her first solo show in 1941 and went on to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, becoming one of the defining American sculptors of the twentieth century.