Biography
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 and she died in New York in 2010.
Although she lived in New York from 1938 until her death, much of her inspiration was derived from her early childhood in France. The family's prosperous business was the restoration and resale of seventeenth and eighteenth-century tapestries. She often spoke of her early, emotionally conflicted familly life; her pratical and affectionate mother, who was an invalid and her father's domineering disposition, as well as his marital infidelities.
Using the body as a primary form, Bourgeois explored the full range of the human condition. From poetic drawings to room size installations she was able to give her fears a physical form in order to exorcise them. Memories, love and abandonment are the core of her complex body of work.
