Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) stands as one of the defining artists of the 20th and early 21st centuries, whose psychologically charged sculptures, installations, and drawings probe themes of memory, trauma, and the body. Born in Paris and later working in New York, Bourgeois drew much of her artistic vocabulary from her childhood experiences, particularly her family’s tapestry restoration workshop. This early environment instilled motifs of repair, rupture, and emotional complexity that would resonate across her long career.

Bourgeois’s “Personages” of the late 1940s signaled her entrance into postwar sculptural discourse, and successive decades saw her continually reinvent form and material—working in wood, latex, marble, fabric, and bronze. Her monumental spider sculptures, including *Maman* (1999), have become emblematic of her practice, embodying themes of protection, vulnerability, and maternal ambivalence. Major retrospectives at the MoMA (1982) and Tate Modern (2007) cemented her legacy, while her influence extends across generations of contemporary artists exploring identity, embodiment, and narrative.

Collections worldwide—including the Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim, MoMA, and the National Gallery of Art—hold her works. Bourgeois’s intimate drawings and writings, often diaristic in nature, reveal the psychological engine that drives her practice. Drawing from Surrealism, feminism, and psychoanalysis while belonging fully to none, Bourgeois forged a fiercely individual vision in which sculpture becomes a site of emotional excavation. Her oeuvre continues to challenge and expand the language of contemporary art.