BIOGRAPHY
An American sculptor, painter, and printmaker of French birth, her parents ran a workshop in Paris restoring tapestries, for which Bourgeois helped with designs. She studied mathematics at the Sorbonne before turning to studio arts. In 1938, after marrying Robert Goldwater, an American art historian, critic, and curator, she went to New York, where she enrolled in the Art Students League and studied painting for two years with Václav Vytlačil. Bourgeois’s work was shown at the Brooklyn Museum Print Exhibition in 1939. During World War II she worked with Joan Miro, Andre Masson, and other European expatriates.
Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists—and, like them, drew from the unconscious—she never became an abstract artist. Instead, she created symbolic objects and drawings expressing themes of loneliness and conflict, frustration and vulnerability, as reflected in her suite of engravings and parables, He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947).
In 1949 Bourgeois had her first sculpture exhibition, including Woman in the Shape of a Shuttle (1947–9), at the Peridot Gallery; this work proved typical of her wooden sculpture and foreshadowed her preoccupations of the following years. Her first sculptures were narrow wooden pieces, such as Sleeping Figure (1950), a ‘stick’ figure articulated into four parts with two supporting poles. Bourgeois soon began using non-traditional media, with rough works in latex and plaster contrasting with her elegantly worked pieces in wood, bronze, and marble. In the 1960s and 1970s her work became more sexually explicit, as in the Femme Couteau group (1969–70), and Cumul I (1969). The psychological origins of her work are particularly evident in Destruction of the Father (1974). Bourgeois’s work was appreciated by a wider public in the 1970s as a result of the change in attitudes brought by feminism and Postmodernism.
An American sculptor, painter, and printmaker of French birth, her parents ran a workshop in Paris restoring tapestries, for which Bourgeois helped with designs. She studied mathematics at the Sorbonne before turning to studio arts. In 1938, after marrying Robert Goldwater, an American art historian, critic, and curator, she went to New York, where she enrolled in the Art Students League and studied painting for two years with Václav Vytlačil. Bourgeois’s work was shown at the Brooklyn Museum Print Exhibition in 1939. During World War II she worked with Joan Miro, Andre Masson, and other European expatriates.
Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists—and, like them, drew from the unconscious—she never became an abstract artist. Instead, she created symbolic objects and drawings expressing themes of loneliness and conflict, frustration and vulnerability, as reflected in her suite of engravings and parables, He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947).
In 1949 Bourgeois had her first sculpture exhibition, including Woman in the Shape of a Shuttle (1947–9), at the Peridot Gallery; this work proved typical of her wooden sculpture and foreshadowed her preoccupations of the following years. Her first sculptures were narrow wooden pieces, such as Sleeping Figure (1950), a ‘stick’ figure articulated into four parts with two supporting poles. Bourgeois soon began using non-traditional media, with rough works in latex and plaster contrasting with her elegantly worked pieces in wood, bronze, and marble. In the 1960s and 1970s her work became more sexually explicit, as in the Femme Couteau group (1969–70), and Cumul I (1969). The psychological origins of her work are particularly evident in Destruction of the Father (1974). Bourgeois’s work was appreciated by a wider public in the 1970s as a result of the change in attitudes brought by feminism and Postmodernism.
2. Works of art by Louise Bourgeois in the Crystal Bridges Museum main collection:
Maman ; Quarantania ; Distant Figures ; Untitled ; Connecticutiana
Maman ; Quarantania ; Distant Figures ; Untitled ; Connecticutiana
REFERENCES
Rina Youngner. "Bourgeois, Louise." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T010592>.
Artwork behind title: Bourgeois's Maman (detail), Crystal Bridges Museum
Rina Youngner. "Bourgeois, Louise." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T010592>.
Artwork behind title: Bourgeois's Maman (detail), Crystal Bridges Museum
