April 26 through August 4, 2002
Louise Bourgeois is now internationally recognized as one of the most important 20th century American artists, yet she has spent over half of her career in relative obscurity. Beginning in the 1940's, shortly after moving to New York City, Bourgeois produced her first mature, highly original works. Her pieces were included in several group exhibitions with the Abstract Expressionists, and she was associated with many avant-garde artists in New York, including exiled European Surrealists and Dadaists. Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois is among the few living representatives of that New York generation. She is still actively involved in the international art scene and continues to produce new works in her own distinctive vocabulary charged with the psychological and symbolic. Louise Bourgeois: The Early Work presents a carefully chosen selection of the work that she produced during the 1940s and 1950s. Most of the exhibited works are from the artist's personal collection and from private collections in the United States. Krannert Art Museum is proud to be the organizer of the most comprehensive museum exhibition of Louise Bourgeois' early work to be shown in the United States.
