Louise Bourgeois

1911
Louise Bourgeois is born in Paris on 25 December. Her parents run a restoration workshop for historical tapestries.

1932 - 1938
Louise Bourgeois studies mathematics at the Sorbonne for a short period but ends these with a philosophical work on Blaise Pascal and Immanuel Kant. In her own words, “disappointed” by the imponderability of mathematics, especially by non-Euclidian geometry, she turns away from this subject and begins to study art in the mid 1930s with, among others, Fernand Léger as her teacher.

1938/39
Louise Bourgeois moves to New York with her husband Robert Goldwater, the US American art historian, and continues her art education at the Art Student’s League. They maintain contacts over the following years with the art historians Erwin Panofsky and Clement Greenberg, the musician John Cage, the architect Le Corbusier, and the artists Willem de Kooning, Joan Miró, Louise Nevelson and Mark Rothko. Bourgeois and Goldwater have three sons.

1945
Bourgeois curates — with the support of Marcel Duchamp — Documents, France 1940 – 1944: Art – Literature – Press of the French Underground at the Norlyst Gallery in New York with works by Bonnard, Dubuffet, Picasso and contributions of Louis Aragon, André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre and Gertrude Stein.

1945 – 1953
First solo exhibitions. Development of numerous Femme Maison works — the motif of the female body architecture-figure will pervade her entire work. The wooden stele-like “Personnages” (1949, 1950, 1953) are granted important exhibitions at Peridot Gallery, New York.
Against the background of the cold war and the communist persecution of the McCarthy Era, Bourgeois is called before the House of Un-American Activities Committee in 1949.

1955
Louise Bourgeois becomes a citizen of the United States of Amercia.

Early 1960s
As one of the first artists, Louise Bourgeois uses latex and other uncommon materials to create revolutionary so-called “formless” objects.

1964 - 1966
Decisive solo exhibitions. Among them one at the New York Stable Gallery in 1964. Louise Bourgeois participates in important New York group exhibitions such as Eccentric Abstraction, 1966, at Fischbach Gallery, curated by Lucy Lippard. Besides Louise Bourgeois, the exhibition also shows works by Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman and Alan Saret.

1967
Together with Eva Hesse and Paul Thek, Louise Bourgeois participates in a panel discussion on the topic of “Erotic Symbolism” at the School of Visual Arts. First journey to Pietrasanta, Italy, to work in marble. Up to the 1980s she repeatedly travells to Pietrasanta and Carrara.

1968
Creates the work Molotov Cocktail, 1968, which can be read in relation to the Vietnam War.

Early 1970s
Louise Bourgeois takes part in various demonstrations and becomes involved in the women’s movement. The growing attention and interest in her art and in work by women artists’ in general, brought on by the women’s movement, leads to a continuously increasing number of exhibition presentations.

1973
Robert Goldwater dies.

1982
The artist becomes known to a broader public due to the extensive retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Deborah Wye.

1986
Bourgeois creates her first Cell works — stage set-like, sometimes enterable room arrangements of various scale and delimitations, furnished with objects rich with associations.

1989
The first large-scale European retrospective at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, curated by Peter Weiermair, travels, among others, to Barcelona, Otterlo, and to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

1992
Participates in Documenta IX at Kassel with the installation Precious Liquids.

1993
The artist represents the United States at the 45th Venice Biennial.

1994
The Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover presents sculptures and installations.

1996
The traveling exhibition Louise Bourgeois – The Locus of Memory, which comprises sculptures, environments and drawings, is presented at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg. It was first seen at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, and later, among others, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

1997
Louise Bourgeois is honored with the National Medal of Arts, which her son accepts in her name from President Clinton at The White House.

1998
A collection of her texts and interviews from 1923 to 1998 entitled Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father is published in English.

1999
Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennial. Exhibition with drawings and sculptures at Kunsthalle Bielefeld.

2000
Louise Bourgeois arranges the opening exhibition at the London Tate Modern and presents, among others, her nine meter tall spider sculpture Maman from 1999. Official opening of a permanent installation in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris.

2001/2002
As first living artist, Louise Bourgeois is honored with an exhibition at the Eremitage in St. Petersburg.

2002
Participates in Documenta 11 in Kassel with the Insomnia Drawings and new Cell works. Is awarded the Wolf Prize in Jerusalem.

Today
Besides sculptures, drawings, and installations, Louise Bourgeois writes letters, diary entries, statements, short stories, and comments on her works. The artist opens her home once a week for a “Sunday Afternoon Salon” to converse with curators, critics, and artists of all disciplines.