LOUISE BOURGEOIS

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was a French-American sculptor, painter, and printmaker who is best known for her arachnid sculptures and her large-scale installation art. At various points throughout her career, her work was loosely aligned with Abstraction Expressionism, Surrealism, and Minimalism. Her fascination with psychoanalysis and her use of art as a thereuputic process led her to explore themes–domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, death and the subconscious–through her work. Her first retrospective was organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1982-83), and her first European retrospective was held at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany (1989-91). She has been granted numerous awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts (1973), among many others.