Louise Nevelson, a pioneer creator of environmental sculpture who became one of the world's best-known artists, died Sunday evening at her home on Spring Street in Manhattan. She was 88 years old, and had been in poor health for several months.

She had worked steadily almost until her death, and had recently produced a 35-foot black steel sculpture, which is being installed at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. A show of her work from the 1950's will be seen this summer at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Mrs. Nevelson was an artist of the first rank, and among the most arresting people of her time. Known for Wall Sculptures

She was known above all for her wall sculptures. When modern sculpture in general was getting more and more open and transparent, Mrs. Nevelson caught the public imagination by her command of darkness and deep shadow. She brought mystery back into sculpture, and the observer who stood for some time in front of one of her black walls was reminded of something not easily found in north America: the impact of carved wood and stone in a twilit Gothic cathedral. Her black walls lived in shadow and drew sustenance from it, and a large public found in her work a satisfaction that it found nowhere else in modern art.

She was born in Kiev in the Ukraine in September 1899. (The exact date of her birth was uncertain, but she settled for Sept. 23). She was the second of four children. Her parents were Isaac Berliawsky and his wife, Minna Zeisel Smolerank.

Her father and her grandfather were in the timber business. In 1902 her father decided to start a new life in the United States. True to the family tradition, he went into the lumber business in Rockland, Me., and made a success of it.

His family remained in the Ukraine until he could offer them security in the United States, and this separation was particularly painful to Louise, who lost the power of speech for six months by way of unconscious protest. A Feeling For Wood

When the family was reunited in Rockland, Mr. Berliawsky saw to it that they were dressed in a luxurious and flamboyant style that heightened their foreignness. Louise was indoctrinated into this mode of life to the point of lifelong addiction; and although she cared nothing for possessions and still less for comfort, she was to the end of her days a spectacular figure for whom no combination of clothing, headgear and jewelry could be too startling.

It never occurred to her to be anything but an artist. In her autobiographical book, ''Dawns and Dusks,'' she related how a librarian in Rockland asked her what she would be when she grew up. ''I'm going to be an artist,'' she replied. ''A sculptor. I don't want color to help me.'' A feeling for wood had been bred into her, and by the time she was 6 she was already working with small pieces of wood that she had scavenged from her father's lumber yard. She told friends in later years that in school she was always cold and only found warmth when she was in art class.

She also inherited from her parents a passionate belief in freedom and independence of thought, a radical orientation in politics, and a crusader's attitude to the emancipation of women. A Dabbler in Different Arts

She grew up to be a tall, rangy, speculative and almost preternaturally determined young woman who was bent on trying all the arts, either one by one or simultaneously, until she found the one that fulfilled her completely. It turned out to be her first love, sculpture; but on the way to that definitive realization, she tried painting and drawing, tried the piano, tried acting, singing and modern dance.

''I never made friends,'' she said later, ''because I didn't intend to stay in Rockland, and I didn't want anything to tie me down.'' In 1920, however, she married Charles Nevelson, whose family was in the shipping business, and moved to New York. Her son and only child, Myron Nevelson, was born in 1922.

From 1920 onward she was responsible for her own education. With her fiery and tenacious nature, she was not cut out for the routine and restraints of a well-run, well-financed family life. After 11 years of ever-increasing discontent, she separated from Mr. Nevelson in 1931. Thereafter she was responsible - financially, morally and in every other way - for herself alone. This had its price, but she paid it gladly. An Extra in Films

In 1929-30 she studied at the Art Students League in New York with Kenneth Hayes Miller. But her regained freedom allowed her to go to what then seemed to her the indispensable source of modern art: Hans Hofmann's school in Munich. Hofmann was indeed a great teacher, but in Munich in 1931 the rise of the Nazi Party made it difficult for him or his students to give of their best. After a few months, Hofmann went into exile and Mrs. Nevelson thereby lost her main reason for being in Europe.

People in Germany responded, as they did everywhere, to her uproarious vitality, and for a time she worked in Berlin and Vienna as an extra in the movies. But that uproarious vitality could turn to melancholy and self-questioning; both then and in 1932, during a second journey to Europe, she had low moments at which her longed-for fulfillment seemed as far away as ever.