The French painter, sculpter, engraver and designer, Louise Bourgeois began her artistic career at her parents' tapestry restoring workshop. She studied Maths at the Sorbonne before deciding on the Arts. In 1938, she moved to New York where she studied painting for two years and joined the Art Students League. Her work was shown at the Brooklyn Museum Print Exhibition in 1939 and, during the Second World War, she worked with various Europeans artists such as Joan Miró and André Masson. Despite having taken part in diverse exhibitions with Abstract Expressionists, Bourgeois has never really been an abstract artist. She produced symbolic objects and drawings which express themes such as loneliness, conflict, frustration and vulnerability. In 1949, she exhibited her sculpture for the first time and, in the 60s and 70s, her work became more sexually explicit. Her work received greater recognition in the 70s as attitudes changed towards feminism and post-modernism. In 1992, she designed the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale and took part in "documenta" 9, in Kassel.
