LOUISE BOURGEOIS | HAS THE DAY INVADED THE NIGHT (FROM WHAT IS THE SHAPE OF THIS PROBLEM?) [IN 2 PARTS]

Courtesy of the Louise Bourgeois Studio 

Louise Bourgeois was born in 1911 in Paris, France, and was raised by two parents who ran a tapestry restoration business. She is best known for her large-scale sculptures and installations, although she was also a prolific painter and printmaker. Over the course of her long career, she explored a variety of themes, mostly personal, including domestic violence, sexual desire and the body. After graduating from the Sorbonne in 1953, Bourgeois studied art first at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole du Louvre, followed by the Académie Julian, and Atelier Fernand Léger. In 1938, Bourgeois emigrated to New York City with her husband, Robert Goldwater, where she studied painting and lithography at The Art Students League of New York. She became an American citizen in 1951 and soon after joined the American Abstract Artists Group, which included Barnett Newman and Al Reinhardt, among others. As a member of this group, Bourgeois began to work in various mediums, including marble, plaster and bronze, and to investigate her fears and vulnerability. In the 1970s she began teaching at the Pratt Institute, The Cooper Union, Brooklyn College, New York School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, and the School of Visual Arts. In 1978 she was commissioned by the General Services Administration to create Facets, her first public sculpture. In 1982, The Museum of Modern held the first retrospective exhibit of her work, and in 2000 her work was included in the opening exhibit of Tate Modern in London. She created the monumental work entitled, Maman, made of steel and marble and over nine meters high for the opening of Tate Modern as part of the commission for the Turbine Hall. The Maman series, begun in the 1990’s and continued until her death, focuses on the theme of motherhood, which was central to Bourgeois’s oeuvre.

Bourgeois was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1997, created by the United States Congress in 1984 to honor artists. She was also awarded the Golden Lion in 1999 at the Venice Biennale, and in 2009, she entered into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Bourgeois died in New York in 2012 at the age of 99.