Artist Focus: Louise J. Bourgeois

I had the very good fortune of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past Saturday. While I was there I took in the exhibit of Louise Bourgeois paintings. They were full of unimaginable forms. It closes August 7, 2022 so if you’re able you should pop by this week and head to gallery 913. But if you can’t here are a few images I captured.

I did a bit of research and here’s a brief overview of the artist. Louise Joséphine Bourgeois December 25, 1911 – May 31, 2010 was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art. She was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored many themes over her career including: the body, death, family, feminism and sexuality. Her work is Abstract Expressionism.

Her parents owned a gallery selling antique tapestries - and a workshop for restoration. Louise worked on the tapestries filling in areas of missing design.

In 1930, she entered the La Sorbonne - Université to study mathematics a subject she valued for stability, saying "I got peace of mind, only through the study of rules nobody could change." After her mother passed away in 1932 Louise changed her course of study to art graduating in 1935. Her father thought modern artists were wastrels and refused to support her, so she joined classes where translators were needed for American students and received tuition free. She continued her art study in Paris, first at the École des Beaux-Arts and École du Louvre and in 1938, she opened her own gallery in a space next door to her father’s tapestry gallery where she showed the work of artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Henri Matisse and Suzanne Valadon. This is where she met her husband Robert Goldwater - an American professor who taught at New York University. They settled in New York City and together raised 3 sons. They remained married until Robert’s death in 1973.

Throughout her life she created works finding inspiration from her own life experiences. She held her first solo show in 1945. In 1951 she became an American citizen. In 1954 she became part of the American Abstract Artists Group. At this time she was also friendly with artists Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. She has been quoted to say "My work deals with problems that are pre-gender," she wrote. "For example, jealousy is not male or female." With the rise of feminism, her work found a wider audience becoming an icon of the feminist art movement.

In 1973 she started teaching at the Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, Brooklyn College and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. From 1974 - 1977, Bourgeois worked at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She also taught for many years in the public schools in Great Neck, Long Island.

Louise received her first retrospective in 1982 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In 1989 there was another retrospective at Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. In 2000 her works were selected to be shown at the opening of the Tate Modern in London. In 2001, she showed at the Hermitage Museum.

She continued to create until her death, her last pieces being finished the week prior to her passing in May 2010.