Louise Bourgeois, Born 1911, A Retrospective: Tate Modern 10 October 2007 — 20 January 2008

Biography: Louise Bourgeois is born in Paris in 1911. As a child she works with her mother and elder adopted sister in a French tapestry gallery that restores Renaissance tapestries. Her brother is born three years later. Louise's father and his brother are mobilized to fight in 1915. Her uncle is killed in the first week and her father is injured. Her mother becomes ill at the end of the war and Louise takes care of her. Later, in1922, her father hires Sadie Gordon Richard to teach English to all the children. She becomes mistress to Louise's father and stays with the family until 1932. At twelve years old Louise is asked to do some drawing in the workshop. She also starts her first diary at this time. In 1936, after years of study, Louise rents her first apartment in Paris and in 1938 she has her first exhibition. She also meets and marries Robert Goldwater, and together they adopt a French orphan. They move to New York, where she has two other children. Louise had her first solo show in 1945. From then on her history is well known. She works with a variety of materials, media, and scale. All the childhood experiences mentioned above became recurring themes within her later work.