Louise Bourgeois Lot n° 8

Louise Bourgeois Untitled 1947 Ink and charcoal on cardboard 20,2 x 12,5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed 'Louise Bourgeois'. - With studio and light age traces. We thank the Louise Bourgeois Studio, New York, for helpful information. Provenance Robert Miller Gallery, New York; Galerie Lelong, Zurich (each with label on the reverse); private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Berkeley 1996 (University Art Museum), New York (The Drawing Center), Boston (MIT List Visual Art Center), Louise Bourgeois, Drawings (with label on the reverse) Paris 1995 (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), Louise Bourgeois (with sticker on the back) Zurich 1989 (Galerie Lelong), Louise Bourgeois, 100 drawings, exhibition cat.no.23 Amsterdam 1988 (Museum Overholland), Louise Bourgeois, Works on Paper 1939-1988 New York 1988 (Robert Miller Gallery), Louise Bourgeois, Drawings 1939-1987 Literature Jerry Gorovoy et al. (eds.), Louise Bourgeois, Drawings, New York 1988, cat.no.40, o.p. with ill. The breadth of Louise Bourgeois's artistic oeuvre is more evident in drawings than in any other medium. Her early work already includes numerous drawings of the most diverse materials - pencil, ink, charcoal, chalk - in which the artist captures found object forms, fragments of thoughts and emotions in surrealistic-looking pictorial ideas. In many cases she deals with the same themes, takes them up again and again and develops reflected artistic statements from them, which - partly only many years later - are also reflected in her sculptural work. "The realistic drawings made at night are the triumph over bad memories, they are necessary to erase them and to free oneself from them... the most abstract among them are pleasant exercise - the desire to fall asleep and find peace in a rhythm, in a model, and wrapped in tenderness." (Louise Bourgeois, quoted in: Louise Bourgeois, The Place of Memory, Sculptures, Environments and Drawings 1946-1995, Ausst.Kat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg 1996, pp. 118-120). Buildings, equipment, human figures or plant details can be identified in her drawings. Such set pieces combine to form fragile, semi-abstract objects that confront the viewer with puzzles that are almost impossible to penetrate - archaic, organic, and seemingly not of this world.