Louise Bourgeois: Autobiographical Series

The French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) is widely renowned as one of the most influential artists of modern and contemporary art. Bourgeois’s sculptures, drawings and prints have always maintained strongly autobiographical themes, expressing her intense emotions from loneliness to anger, desire, sadness, happiness.

Autobiographical Series (1994), 14 etchings, captures some of her deepest thoughts and memories whilst 11 Drypoints (1999) take these personal emotions into more abstract territory. Featuring some of her most distinctive motifs, from the pregnant woman to the cat, the prints in these two series are clearly inspired by her obsessions and fascination with the human condition. Womblike figures, stairs and ladders, feet, long hair, clocks, scissors, bathtubs and a pregnant mosquito – the references to memory and the unconscious are evident in these works.

A Hayward Touring exhibition from Southbank Centre, London.