Spider by Louise Bourgeois
Maman by Louise Bourgeois
Maman by Louise Bourgeois
Untitled by Louise Bourgeois
Femme Maison by Louise Bourgeois
Eyes by Louise Bourgeois
1911–2010 · French

Louise Bourgeois

Bourgeois did not become famous until she was seventy. She had been making art in New York since 1938, working in painting, printmaking, and sculpture while raising three children and teaching. Nobody paid much attention. Then the Museum of Modern Art[5] gave her a retrospective in 1982 and the art world discovered a body of work that had been accumulating for four decades.

Held in 15 museums[1]

Where to seeShop prints
Portrait of Louise Bourgeois

Biography

She was born in Paris. Her parents ran a tapestry restoration workshop in Choisy-le-Roi. She grew up watching weavers repair old tapestries, filling in damaged sections so the repair was invisible. The craft of joining, mending, and concealing damage stayed with her. So did her father's affair with her English tutor, which her mother tolerated and Bourgeois did not. She described the betrayal in interviews for the rest of her life. The giant spider sculptures, which she called Maman, were tributes to her mother: patient, useful, protective, and always weaving.

She studied mathematics at the Sorbonne before switching to art, attending several Paris studios including Leger's. She married the American art historian Robert Goldwater in 1938 and moved to New York. The early American work includes painted wooden figures, latex forms, and plaster casts of body parts. The materials are domestic: fabric, rubber, plaster, bone.

The Cells, room-sized installations containing furniture, mirrors, clothing, and sculpture, became her primary format from the 1990s onwards. They are psychological enclosures. You look in but do not enter. The viewer is a voyeur. She kept working past her ninety-eighth birthday. She died in 2010, two weeks short of ninety-nine.

Timeline

  1. 1911Born on Christmas Day in Paris, the middle child of tapestry restorers Louis and Josephine Bourgeois. Grew up helping in the family workshop near the Gobelins manufactory, learning to draw missing sections of antique tapestries by age 12.
  2. 1932Abandoned her mathematics studies at the Sorbonne at age 21 following her mother's death. She turned to art, studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and in Fernand Leger's studio.
  3. 1938Married American art historian Robert Goldwater at age 27 and emigrated to New York City. She enrolled at the Art Students League and began exhibiting her early paintings and engravings.
  4. 1949Held her first solo sculpture exhibition at the Peridot Gallery in New York at age 38, showing her Personages series. These tall, slender wooden totems explored themes of absence and longing for the family she had left behind in France.
  5. 1974Created The Destruction of the Father at age 63 in New York, a visceral, cave-like installation in latex and plaster. The work confronted childhood trauma and patriarchal authority with a raw psychological intensity that defined her artistic identity.
  6. 1982Became the first woman to receive a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at age 71. The exhibition introduced her decades of sculpture, drawing and installation to a global audience after years of relative obscurity.
  7. 1999Unveiled Maman, a 30-foot bronze spider sculpture, at the opening of Tate Modern in London at age 88. The work became one of the most iconic public sculptures of the late 20th century.
  8. 2010Died on 31 May in New York at age 98, having continued to produce new work from her Chelsea home until the final years of her life. She was awarded the French Legion of Honour and the US National Medal of Arts.

Notable Works

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Where to See Louise Bourgeois

6 museums worldwide.

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Frequently Asked Questions

  • Did louise bourgeois have children?
    Louise Bourgeois was raising three children while making art in New York.
  • Is louise bourgeois a contemporary artist?
    Louise Bourgeois continued working past her ninety-eighth birthday, and died in 2010, which may qualify her as a contemporary artist.
  • Is louise bourgeois still alive?
    No, Louise Bourgeois died in 2010.
  • Was louise bourgeois a feminist?
    It is suggested that Louise Bourgeois was dealing with gender differentiation in the context of Freudian psychology in her art of the 1940s and 1950s. Although Bourgeois may not have read Lacan until the 1970s, it is suggested that she was likely to have known his ideas as early as the 1930s. Her work tends to be characterised by issues relating to parenthood, the male form, and childhood.
  • Was louise bourgeois a mother?
    Louise Bourgeois was a mother.
  • When did louise bourgeois die?
    Louise Bourgeois died in 2010 at the age of 99.
  • When did louise bourgeois start making art?
    Louise Bourgeois grew up in an apartment above a gallery where her parents repaired and sold tapestries. She produced three-dimensional art that often expressed her childhood experiences and emotions.
  • Where can i see louise bourgeois art?
    Louise Bourgeois's works can be seen at Mu.ZEE - Kunstmuseum aan Zee, Sculptures in the National Gallery of Art[4], National Gallery of Art, and 2 other museums worldwide.
  • Who was louise bourgeois husband?
    Louise Bourgeois married the American art historian Robert Goldwater in 1938.
  • Why did louise bourgeois create maman?
    Louise Bourgeois created the giant spider sculptures, called Maman, as tributes to her mother. She described her mother as patient, useful, protective, and always weaving.
  • Why did louise bourgeois like spiders?
    Louise Bourgeois said that the spider was a reference to her industrious and protective mother. She stated that, like a spider, her mother was a weaver.
  • When did louise bourgeois became famous?
    Louise Bourgeois did not become famous until she was seventy. The Museum of Modern Art[5] gave her a retrospective in 1982, and the art world discovered a body of work that had been accumulating for four decades.

Sources

Editorial draws on the following primary and tertiary references for Louise Bourgeois.

  1. [1] museum National Galleries Scotland Used for: museum holdings.
  2. [2] museum Tate Modern Used for: museum holdings.
  3. [3] museum Cleveland Museum of Art Used for: museum holdings.
  4. [4] museum National Gallery of Art Used for: museum holdings.
  5. [5] museum Museum of Modern Art Used for: museum holdings.
  6. [6] museum Wallonia-Brussels Federation Museum of Contemporary Arts Used for: museum holdings.
  7. [7] book Jed Perl, Art in America 1945-1970 Used for: biography.

Editorial overseen by Solis Prints. Sources verified 2026-06-22. Click a source for details, or hover over [N] in the page above to preview.

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