Diminishing Reflection XXV, a small-scale, black, wood relief enclosed in a box, typifies Nevelson’s evocative wall pieces of the 1950s and ’60s and follows on her earliest abstract wood constructions from the mid-1940s, which incorporated found objects. Reflecting on her process of constructing such works, Nevelson said, “Sometimes it’s the material that takes over; sometimes it’s me that takes over. I permit them to play, like a seesaw. I use action and counteraction, like in music, all the time. Action and counteraction. It was always a relationship—my speaking to the wood and the wood speaking back to me.”