Bourgeois, Louise

Bourgeois, Louise (1911– ). French-American abstract sculptor, born in Paris. She began her artistic training in the family craft of tapestry restoration, then studied at various art academies and in Léger's studio. In 1938 she married the American art historian Robert Goldwater and settled in New York. She first made a name as an abstract painter, but turned increasingly to sculpture in the 1940s. Her first one-woman show, at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, in 1945, included drawings, prints, and wood sculpture; her first exhibition devoted solely to sculpture—consisting mainly of painted vertical wooden forms arranged in groups—was held at the Peridot Gallery, New York, in 1949. In the 1950s she produced wood constructions, painted uniformly black or white, that slightly preceded the similar works of Louise Nevelson. Subsequently Bourgeois has worked in various materials, including stone, metal, and latex, and she has built up a reputation as one of the leading contemporary American sculptors. She continued to be active in her 80s and in 1993 she represented the USA at the Venice Biennale.

Although Bourgeois's work is abstract, it is often suggestive of the human figure, sometimes with sexual overtones. Edward Lucie-Smith writes that her ‘essential subject matter is entirely personal … She explores and re-explores the consequences of wounds inflicted on her in childhood—by her philandering father and by the hated English governess who was her father's mistress. “My mind, as an artist, was conditioned by that affair, by my jealousy of that hated intruder”’ (Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, 1996).