American sculptor, painter and printmaker of French birth. Her parents ran a workshop in Paris restoring tapestries, for which Bourgeois filled in the designs where they had become worn.

She studied mathematics at the Sorbonne before turning to studio arts.

During World War II she worked with Joan Miró, André Masson and other European expatriates.

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 Vytlacil.

She painted and engraved until the Forties when she became more interested in the three-dimensions of sculpture.

In New York she began her artistic career as a painter and printmaker but eventually turned to sculpture in the late 1940’s.

Her abstract work incorporates the use of stone, wood, metal, latex and other found materials.

The charismatic French-American sculptor is truly obsessed by her work, claiming that the finished product just becomes art, without planning.

Characterized by organic forms, her sculpture is extremely personal and often deals with female identity and sexuality.

Virtually ignored for decades, Bourgeois was finally recognized in the 1980s and 90s and has influenced many women artists.

filette

Sexual imagery is part of Louise’s way of pushing the envelope.

Stacking, she once said, was a tie to her childhood when she would stack blocks and other materials.

She likes to think of herself as an inventor, because she is concerned with pushing the boundaries of what one perceives 'art' to be.

Eyes

She uses the body and its parts as elements of her work.