A prolific artist, Louise Bourgeois created an immense body of work including prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture, the latter being the medium that brought her international attention. In fact, she was one of the first installation artists. She is also classified as an Abstract Expressionist because of her early activity in New York City.

Recognition came somewhat late in her life because she spent many years committed to domestic life of raising children and maintaining a home for them and her husband.

She was born in France three years before the beginning of World War I, and her early childhood was unsettled because she and her mother traveled about to follow her father in the military. Af...