Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) was a French-born, American artist whose seven-decade career transformed the landscape of modern and contemporary sculpture. Raised in a family tapestry workshop near Paris and later relocating to New York in 1938, she drew deeply on childhood memories, family dynamics, and psychological conflict to create intensely personal yet universal works. Working across sculpture, installation, drawing, and printmaking, she became renowned for series such as the early “Personages,” room-like “Cells,” and monumental spider sculptures, which explore themes of protection, vulnerability, and the complexity of human relationships.
Bourgeois’s art is grounded in emotion more than in style, addressing subjects such as motherhood, sexuality, fear, and repair with a raw honesty that resonated strongly with later feminist and body-oriented art. Using materials ranging from bronze, marble, and glass to fabric and found objects, she created tactile forms that blur the boundaries between abstraction and the body, inviting viewers into spaces that feel at once intimate and unsettling. Celebrated internationally with major exhibitions and honors late in her life, Bourgeois is now recognized as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.