Louise Bourgeois (1911, Paris – 2010, New York) left behind a profoundly influential body of work spanning sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, and printmaking. Her practice explores themes of trauma, sexuality, memory, and psychoanalysis – often centred on the female experience. Born into a family of tapestry restorers, Bourgeois was a gifted student who also worked in the family’s workshop. A formative trauma – her father’s long-term affair with her English tutor – became a lifelong source of emotional and artistic inquiry. Throughout her career, Bourgeois shifted fluidly between materials, forms, and scales, veering between figuration and abstraction. Despite this formal range, she returned repeatedly to core emotional states: isolation, jealousy, anger, and vulnerability.
Bourgeois earned a degree in philosophy from Lycée Fénelon, Paris, in 1932. She studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts and the École du Louvre, and later pursued further studies at the Académie Colarossi, Académie Ranson, Académie Julian, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1938, she moved to the United States, where she remained until her death in 2010. In New York, she joined the American Abstract Artists group, forging connections with figures such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1945 at Bertha Schaefer Gallery. She went on to participate in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid. In 2000, Bourgeois became the first artist commissioned to create a work for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. The Tate’s 2007 retrospective, which travelled to the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., solidified her status as a pioneering voice in late Modernism and beyond.