Louise Bourgeois and the Spider

Louise Bourgeois - Spider - 1995 - Steel sculpture - 131 in. x 188 in. x 134 in. (332.74 cm x 477.52 cm x 340.36 cm) - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) San Francisco, CA (click photo for larger image)French-born American Abstract Expressionist sculptor, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) created works that were heavily influenced by traumatic psychological events from her childhood, particularly her father's infidelity. “Bourgeois transformed her experiences into a highly personal visual language through the use of mythological and archetypal imagery, adopting objects such as spirals, spiders, cages, medical tools, and sewn appendages to symbolize the feminine psyche, beauty, and psychological pain.” (The Art Story)

Louise Bourgeois created the first of her darkly compelling spider sculptures in the mid-1990s, when she was in her eighties. She used the spider as the central protagonist in her art during the last decades of her life. For the artist, whose work explored themes of childhood memory and loss, the spider carried associations of a maternal figure. Bourgeois associated the "Spider" series with her own mother, who died when the artist was 21. From drawings to large-scale installations, Bourgeois's spiders appear as looming and powerful protectresses, yet are delicate and vulnerable.