Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois, French-American sculptor born in Paris in 1911 and lived in the U.S. from 1938 until her passing in 2010, is recognized as a leading artist of the 20th century, and her work is found in virtually every major public and private collection worldwide. Bourgeois’ sculpture is characterized by organic forms and the use of various materials including wood, stone, plaster, metal and latex, and it often deals with memories of her childhood and family. A complex and deftly woven body of her work involves spiders: huge spiders that inhabit and dominate great public spaces; or spiders, perhaps families of spiders, in intimate spaces. Bourgeois’ sculpture with Graphicstudio, Spider Home, is part of this poetic and immensely important work.

Spider Home

Based on Bourgeois’ steel art work Spider Home, the sculpture is in four components: two spider forms cast in bronze, and a welded web form of bronze wire with a cast bronze fly, all attached to a corner structure fabricated of wood.

Within the tradition of French bronze sculpture established by Rodin, Degas and others, Spider Home is published in an edition of six.

 

"The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was a tapestry woman. My mother was my best friend. She was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensible, neat, and useful as a Spider."
- Louise Bourgeois 1996

 

The multiple Spider Home belongs to an ensemble of works by Bourgeois, described by Mieke Bal in Louise Bourgeois’ Spider: The Architecture of Art-Writing:

“...a large number of drawings, sculptures, and installations, each representing a huge spider, sometimes in combination with a small one, hovering over a page, a wall, a ceiling, a room....They are intensely figurative, hair-raisingly strong in their affect on the viewer... Yet through the narrativity that inheres to their figurativity and their appeal to mood, they invoke the home, which is where the memories of spiders belong and where little children spin their dreams out of spiders and their webs, webs that catch and enfold whatever comes their way.”

 

Printmaking + Sculpture Terms

Printmaking Glossary

Sculpture Glossary

Sales

For sales, or more information about an edition, please contact Graphicstudio at (813) 974-3503 or gsoffice@usf.edu.

Copyright + Reproduction

Images of the artwork are jointly owned by the artist and Graphicstudio. Reproduction of any kind including electronic media must be expressly approved by Graphicstudio.