Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois was a French-American sculptor whose long career, spanning more than seven decades, explored themes of memory, the body, sexuality, and family trauma through work in wood, bronze, marble, latex, and textile. She is best known for her Maman series, gigantic bronze spider sculptures up to thirty feet tall, which she described as a tribute to her mother, a weaver by trade, portraying the spider as a protective, patient, and industrious figure rather than a menacing one. Bourgeois worked in relative obscurity for much of her career before a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1982 brought wide recognition, and she continued producing significant new work into her nineties, becoming one of the most influential sculptors of the late twentieth century.