Louise Bourgeois French-American, 1911-2010

Louise Bourgeois was a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompassed sculpture, installation, painting, drawing and printmaking. Moving between abstraction and figuration, she developed a deeply personal visual language exploring memory, identity, sexuality and the complexities of human relationships. Drawing on experiences from her childhood and family life, her work examined themes of vulnerability, betrayal, anxiety and protection. These psychological concerns found expression in works such as The Destruction of the Father (1974), her monumental spider sculpture Maman (1999) and the architectural Cells series. Printmaking remained an integral part of her practice, with Bourgeois experimenting extensively with techniques including etching, drypoint, aquatint and lithography to explore recurring motifs across different media.

Bourgeois studied mathematics at the Sorbonne before pursuing art at institutions including the École des Beaux-Arts and the École du Louvre in Paris. Although active throughout the twentieth century, international recognition came later in her career, following a major retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1982. She represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and received the inaugural commission for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2000. In 2007, Tate Modern presented a major travelling retrospective of her work, subsequently shown at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She was awarded the French Legion of Honour in 2008.