Louis Bourgeois

LOUIS BOURGEOIS (Paris, 1911- New York, 2010).
"Les fleurs", 2009.
Silkscreen on paper. Copy 161/175.
Signed and justified in pencil. With dedication and reference number "LB017" on the back.
Measurements: 28 x 21,6 cm.
In 2009, Louise Bourgeois created a series of prints with red floral motifs added by hand with gouache and graphite as a Christmas gift for her close friends. As part of her latest works, she explores the themes of nature, femininity and emotional expression. The work features floral motifs rendered in Bourgeois' signature style, in which flowers appear both delicate and firm, capturing growth, decay, beauty and transience. Flowers symbolize the nurturing and delicate aspects of nature, as well as the complexities of femininity, conveying deeper psychological narratives about life cycles, memory and personal history.
Louise Bourgeois grew up near Paris, where her parents owned a tapestry restoration business. Her childhood was marked by a complicated relationship with her father, who cheated on Bourgeois's mother with the British nanny. This traumatic experience haunted her throughout her life and was the main source of inspiration for her art. After studying mathematics, Bourgeois attended several art schools in Paris. In 1938 she married New York art historian Robert Goldwater (1907-1973) and moved to New York, where she had three children. At first, Bourgeois focused on painting and printmaking. It was not until the late 1940s that she began working as a sculptor. However, her almost obsessive writing, as well as drawing, always remained central forms of expression. After the death of her father in 1951, she devoted herself intensely to psychoanalysis. Bourgeois varied the unusual proportions and materials of her work as much as her forms, which oscillated between abstraction and figuration. Strong emotions such as loneliness, jealousy, anger and fear constitute the common thread throughout her work.
The first major retrospective of Bourgeois' work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when she was 70 years old. Subsequently, she created her monumental spider sculptures and the famously bizarre "Cells," structures she animated with dangling cloth dolls and other objects. Art was his means of overcoming the past and practicing a kind of exorcism.