![]() ![]() Louise Bourgeois died in 2010 at the age of ninety-eight.įrom an early age Louise Bourgeois's drawing skills were put to use as she worked in the family business repairing and restoring medieval and Renaissance tapestries. Although her work has been associated with several different art historical movements, including Surrealism and Minimalism, Bourgeois always created works on her own terms. In 1993, at the age of eighty-one, Bourgeois was chosen to represent the USA at the Venice Biennale and in 2000 she became the first artist to create a commission for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, for which she made Maman 1999, a giant Spider. Imagery relating to spools of thread, sewing and mending maintained a central place in her practice until her death. In the mid 1990s Bourgeois began to work with textiles, including old garments, primarily her own and those of her mother, that she had saved for many years. The Cells, typically constructed from a mixture of salvaged architectural materials such as old doors, windows, wire mesh and glass panes combined with found objects and sculptural fragments, would become an important part of her artistic production during the remainder of her life. The artistic climate during the Postmodern era celebrated personal and narrative based artistic practice further raising Bourgeois's profile.īourgeois's first European retrospective in 1989 was organised by the Kunstverein in Frankfurt the same year she began to make her Cells. It was during this period that Bourgeois began to speak publicly about her childhood traumas and how this informed her work. In 1982 she had a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first ever at MoMA for a female artist, which introduced her to a broader audience. The Personages depict individuals, and Bourgeois's relationship with them, often reflecting her homesickness and the people she left behind in Paris.įollowing the death of her husband in 1973, Bourgeois continued to make art and teach, and she also became associated with the New York feminist movement. Bourgeois often used her roof as a studio and the Personages recall the skyscrapers and rooftops that surrounded her. These sculptures were made from wood, and were installed as environmental installations. She was associated with the New York School, befriending the likes of Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning and later joined the American Abstract Artist Group. Her first three-dimensional works like her totem-like figures were collectively known as Personages 1946-55. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, while raising three sons, she exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions and her work was acquired by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Goldwater and Bourgeois married and moved to New York the same year.īourgeois's first solo exhibition, which consisted of twelve paintings, was held at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, 1945 that same year her work was also included in the Whitney Annual (later the Whitney Biennial). In 1938 she opened her own gallery where she met her husband, the eminent art historian, Robert Goldwater. During this period she studied with Fernand Léger, among others, developing three-dimensional work, as well as paintings and drawings. She undertook her artistic training at a number of the principal artists' studios and academies in Paris from the mid to late 1930s. ![]() She first studied Philosophy at the University of Paris and had enrolled to study Geometry and Mathematics, before deciding instead to embark on a career as an artist. She was the second of three children and her parents ran a tapestry restoration workshop and gallery, where Louise assisted from an early age. Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was born on the 25th of December 1911 in Paris to Joséphine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois. ![]()
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