The 1994 catalogue of prints by Louise Bourgeois contains entries for 150 compositions and their evolving states and variants. In all, that represents some 600 printed sheets created by the artist between 1938 and 1993. Most of these works are in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art and were donated by the artist beginning in 1990, when she decided to give an archive of her printed work to the Museum. From the time that catalogue was issued until her death in 2010, Bourgeois spent considerable time on printmaking and continued donating to the Museum an example of every composition, along with many related states and variants. MoMA’s Bourgeois Archive, along with all prints not represented in the collection, are documented on this website and constitute a total print oeuvre of approximately 5,400 sheets.
Important documentation from the 1994 catalogue, including the artist’s commentaries on individual prints, has been transferred to the entries on this website. However, a new catalogue numbering sequence has been established. The chronology, primary references, print-related exhibition history, and bibliography from the 1994 catalogue have been updated and restructured for this website. That information is available in “About the Artist.” The introductory essay by Deborah Wye from the 1994 catalogue is available in a downloadable version. An essay by Wye, covering Bourgeois’s entire printed oeuvre up to 2010, is found in the catalogue Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2017) and is available on this website.
“Printmaking, instead of being a reproductive medium, was for me a creative medium.”