Louise Bourgeois in the Rijksmuseum Gardens

It is rare that an artist’s oeuvre so closely reflects his or her life that it seems to directly embody specific events and feelings. The twelve Louise Bourgeois sculptures, on display in the Rijksmuseum gardens from this spring, will form an intimate journal of recurring themes in the life and work of the artist. Several of the works relate to Bourgeois’s childhood, for example. The monumental works Spider (1996), Spider Couple (2003) and Crouching Spider(2003) can be seen as homages to her protective mother, a weaver. The high-gloss aluminium sculptures of Untitled (2004), hanging from the branches of the great wingnut tree, refer to her father’s habit of storing chairs by hanging them on roof beams in the attic of their home. Motherhood and Bourgeois’s own youth are recurring themes in the artist’s work, as are fear, friendship, materiality and the body. ^*

Rijksmuseum gardens
25 May – 3 November 2019
Open daily 9am – 5pm.
_{* source: press release.}