Painter and sculptor, born in Paris, France, into a family of tapestry restorers. She studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, then art at the École du Louvre, the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and the studio of Léger. She married Robert Goldwater and moved to the USA in 1938, and from 1940 onwards produced works made of materials including fabric, plaster, latex, bone, rubber, and metal. Through these she explores her own childhood and subconscious, using a variety of semi-abstract forms, many filled with sexual imagery. Now recognized as a major 20th-c artist, her works include The Quartered One (19645) and Maman (1999).
Louise Bourgeois (born December 25, 1911, Paris) is an artist and sculptor, whose work has been strongly influenced by the Surrealists, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. It is difficult to directly link her work to other artists because she is extremely original in much of her work.
Her parents were involved in repairing tapestries, although at 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne. Her studies of geometry contributed to her early work concerning cubism (in early paintings and drawings). Unable to find what she was looking for, she began with painting, at several schools including the École des Beaux-Arts, and worked as an assistant to Fernand Léger.
Her works are sometimes abstract and she speaks of them in symbolic terms, and the main focus is "relationships" - considering an entity in relation to its surroundings. Louise Bourgeois finds inspiration for her works from her childhood: her adulterous father, who had an affair with her governess (who resided in the home), and her mother, who refused to acknowledge it. Despite early success in that show (one of the works was purchased for the Museum of Modern Art), she was subsequently left alone by the art market during the fifties and sixties. In her sculpture, she has worked in many different mediums, including rubber, wood, stone, metal, and appropriately for someone who came from a family of tapestry makers, fabric.
In 1993 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale.
Visitors are able to mount spiral staircases on the towers to experience the space of the platform and the Turbine Hall. Adjacent to the towers and straddling the bridge of the Turbine Hall is an enormous 35 feet high spider by Bourgeois, the largest she has made." http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilever.htm
See also
List of artworks by Louise Bourgeois
Reference
· 1911 – Born in Paris, France.
· 1932-1935 – studies at the Sorbonne Paris France.
· 1936-1937 – studies at the Ecole du louver Paris France.
· 1937-1938 – Pupil of Fernand Leger.
· 1938 – Emigrates to New York, USA.
Books
New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (ed.) Marika Herskovic, New York School Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9677994-0-6 website
American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (ed.) Marika Herskovic, New York School Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9677994-1-4 website
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