Louise Nevelson was born in Kiev, Russia in 1899. While she was just a child she her family moved to Maine. As early as age nine she stated her desire and intention to be a sculptor, but it was not until she was forty years old that she had her first exhibition as an artist. During those years, Nevelson remained busy perfecting and changing her art, but never for any financial gain. It wasn’t until twenty years later when Nevelson was in her sixties, before she could be supported financially by her art. Nevelson studied in Germany in the 1930s and participated in many art forms other than sculpture. Nevelson has been called "the most celebrated female sculptor in the history of American modernism". Her signature work was the wall sculpture. A constant in most of her works is the use of wood as her medium. Nevelson's father worked at a timber business in Maine, so she grew up surrounded by trees and wood, a plentiful supply for the production of her sculpture. Her wall sculptures looks like boxes hung on a wall, and inside those boxes are cluttered, disorganized, large and wide bookshelves full of fragments of debris. These wall sculptures were normally painted black, which gave the work a Gothic, as well as a shadowy, appearance. After enjoying the fruits of her labors for nearly thirty years, Nevelson died in 1988.