Louise Bourgeois. Extrême tension

BnF Richelieu – Galerie Mansart - galerie Pigott

This exhibition devoted to the graphic work of Louise Bourgeois brings together for the first time the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Centre Pompidou. It is also the first exhibition dedicated to the artist in a Parisian public institution since 2008. A major figure in contemporary art, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) built her body of work on the margins of the great movements that marked the 20th century — surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism… — developing a deeply personal language that continues to exert a profound influence on many artists. Having settled in New York in 1938, she discovered printmaking at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 — a technique that, along with drawing, would become essential to her entire body of work. Printmaking, drawing and sculpture feed into one another; words are inscribed within images; gestures repeat like rituals. In 1995, the Musée national d'art moderne – Centre Pompidou and the Bibliothèque nationale de France each devoted a separate exhibition to her graphic work, drawings on one side, prints and books on the other. On this occasion, the Bibliothèque nationale de France received an exceptional gift from the artist: around a hundred plates covering the entirety of her production, a collection subsequently enriched by regular gifts from the Amis de la BnF. The Cabinet d'art graphique of the Centre Pompidou for its part acquired recent drawings, mainly from the 1990s, to which were added several consecutive gifts from the artist, from the Clarence Westbury Foundation and from the American Friends of the Centre Pompidou. Today, the Centre Pompidou holds 91 works (drawings, prints, a sculpture and an installation) and the BnF more than a hundred prints as well as eight artist's books. By bringing together for the first time these two complementary collections, the exhibition allows us to understand the interdependence of drawing and printmaking in the work of Louise Bourgeois, and highlights the main themes that punctuate her oeuvre.

Source: Paris Open Data ↗