Louise Bourgeois: A Retrospective

The Tate Modern in London presents a traveling exhibition of more than 200 works by one of the world’s most respected sculptors, Louise Bourgeois.

The retrospective exhibition includes early drawings, paintings, and prints, as well as later sculptures and installations, providing an opportunity to reassess Bourgeois’ work.

While Bourgeois, who was featured in Season 1 of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, has worked her way through most of the twentieth century’s avant-garde movements, from abstraction to realism, she has always remained distinctively individual, powerfully inventive, and often at the forefront of contemporary art.

Her work is characterized by an obsessive subject matter and an experimental approach to materials and techniques, but despite the way the object is created and presented, her main subject remains the same: femininity, sexuality, childhood trauma, and isolation.

The Tate Modern exhibition explores Bourgeois’s core themes and demonstrates that even in her 90s she continues to defy convention. And that she is still an important, unique voice in contemporary art, is validated by the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: New Work, that is on display at Hauser & Wirth, also in London.

Rachel Campbell-Johnston of The Times writes, “Bourgeois is restlessly inventive. She may be well into her nineties but she continues to experiment, as a concurrent show of new pieces at Hauser & Wirth‚Äôs old Bond Street galleries makes plain.”

The retrospective exhibition will be on view at the Tate Modern through January 2008 and will then proceed to Beaubourg in Paris. From June 2008 on, the exhibition will tour around the US. Louise Bourgeois: New Work is on view at Hauser & Wirth until November 18.