In 1930 Bourgeois entered the Sorbonne, intending to study mathematics and geometry. She switched to art following the death of her mother in 1932. After graduating from the Sorbonne in 1935 she continued her studies at a number of French art schools, including the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts. Her creativity, in this period and throughout her life, was often inspired by childhood memories and trauma—most notably recollections of her father’s infidelities with the family’s English governess.

Bourgeois met her husband, the American art historian Robert Goldwater, in 1938 at a print shop she ran. The couple moved to America that year, and there Bourgeois attended the Art Students League of New York. Shortly after, in the 1940s, she began working in earnest to enter the New York art world. Her sculpture during this period was often composed of scraps from junkyards and pieces of driftwood.

 In 1949 she had her first sculpture exhibition, at the Peridot Gallery, which included works such as Woman in the Shape of a Shuttle (1947-49). After this exhibition she abandoned painting to focus primarily on sculpture, although she also continued to produce drawings and prints.

 Throughout subsequent decades Bourgeois’ work and style continued to evolve. Her reputation in the art world increased notably in the 1970s, and the first retrospective of her work was at New York’s MOMA in 1982. Subsequent years saw additional exhibitions, both of her sculpture as well as of her drawings and prints. Although she worked in a variety of styles, her work was always autobiographical, as she herself asserted, and often based on the notion of seeking comfort in a painful world.

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