Louise Bourgeois
American, born France (Paris, France, 1911)Throughout her 70-year career, Louise Bourgeois has obsessively spun memories and traumas into archetypal figures such as the Father, Mother, Child, and Lover. These are represented in a complex symbolic language drawn from apparent opposites: breast and phallus, human and animal, plastic and flesh, seduction and repulsion. Her practice has encompassed massive installations and private drawings, and has demonstrated her mastery of materials as diverse as marble, bronze, wood, wax, latex, cement, and fabric — all in pursuit of the truthful expression of psychosexual states.
A native of France, Bourgeois emigrated to the U.S. in 1938. After a decades-long pattern of bursts of activity followed by withdrawal from the public eye, she has since the 1980s sustained a vital role in contemporary art, her independence serving as a model for younger artists.
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