Louise Nevelson
Chapel of the Good Shepherd

Louise Nevelson, the most original and perhaps the most famous American sculptor of the twentieth century, was a strikingly beautiful woman who lived so unconventional a life that by the time of her death in 1988 she had become a legend outside as well as inside the art world.

Born Leah Berliawsky in a provincial Russian town near Kiev in 1899, she immigrated to America with her family when she was five. They settled in Rockland, Maine, where, as Jews and foreigners, they were ostracized. Louise, whose talent emerged early, grew up feeling alternately superior and inferior.

At twenty, to escape from Maine, she married a wealthy New Yorker and moved to Manhattan where she studied with some of the best art teachers of the time. As her dedication to art grew, she abandoned her husband and neglected her son - which caused her intense maternal guilt for the rest of her life. During the Depression, she joined other artists of her generation and worked for the Works Progress Administration.

Although she had her first solo exhibition in 1941, her real success did not come until she was almost sixty, after she had gone through a period of extreme poverty that brought her close to despair. She found her inspiration in cubism, primitive art and her own unconscious, creating a rich iconography of images. With black, white or gold paint and perfect placement, she transformed old pieces of wood and other objects picked up on the street into powerful sculptures.

During the last decades of her life she adopted an exotic persona and appeared in public in mink eyelashes and designer costumes, all the while continuing to go every day before dawn to her studio to add to the huge and astonishing body of work that is today included in the collections of major museums around the world.

The Chapel Of The Good Shepherd at Saint Peter's Church is a breath-taking sculptural environment created with great ingenuity by the eminent American sculptor Louise Nevelson. The chapel is a five-sided space, measuring 28 by 21 feet. The sculptural elements are white painted wood on white walls. The Cross of the Good Shepherd is white paint and gold leaf. Floors, pews, and altar are bleached ash. The window is frosted white.

The three suspended columns, which sway slightly but perceptively in air currents, imply the spirituality of the Trinity. The five white walls represent the twelve apostles, sky vestment-Trinity, and the sacrament of Holy Communion.

The chapel was planned as an inviolate space to be used exclusively for worship, prayer and meditation. Mrs. Nevelson also created the sanctuary lamp and designed both the altar fabrics and the vestments for the clergy. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd is the only permanent installation of a Nevelson environment in New York City. Its individual elements have been entitled by Mrs. Nevelson as follows: