Book Description
Louise Bourgeois first travelled to Russia in 1932, at the age of 21, having just received her Baccalaureate in philosophy from the University of Paris. Her second journey occured in the spring of 1934, and included a visit to the Moscow Theater Festival, to see the work of the Russian Constructivists, and to observe May Day celebrations in Red Square. Nearly 70 years later, Bourgeois returned to Russia on the occasion of her retrospective at the State Hermitage Museum, the first major exhibition of a living American artist to be held at that institution. From the teetering personages of the late 1940s, which represent the members of the family she left behind in France, to the great steel protectress Maman, created in 2001 especially for the Hermitage courtyard, Bourgeois' indomitable will, psychological complexity, and brash, bold personality show through in the sculptures and drawings illustrated here. Essays by Sofia Kudriatseva and Julie Sylvester. Foreword by Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky. Red velvet clothbound, 12 x 15 in., 104 pages, 35 color and 16 b&w Publisher: Hermitage Projects

About the Author
Born in 1911 in Paris, Louise Bourgeois was raised in a household that famously included her father's mistress, who was also Louise's nanny. She studied philosophy and mathematics before turning to art in 1934, and over the next few years studied at various art academies and in the atelier of Fernand Léger, among others. She moved to New York in 1938 with her new husband, American art historian Robert Goldwater. Her first U.S. showing was in a print exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and, over the next 50 years, she exhibited consistently in solo and group shows. In 1982, Bourgeois was the subject of the first retrospective ever given to a woman artist at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and her work has remained in the spotlight ever since. Bourgeois, who is now in her early 90s, lives and works in New York in the house on 20th Street that she and her young family moved into in 1962.