Les Fleurs
28 Pages
19.5 x 25.5 cm
Color Offset
Second Edition 2023
ISBN 978-3-907179-70-3
Les Fleurs by Louise Bourgeois is a work on paper that combines watercolor, gouache, and pencil. As part of her later works, it explores themes of nature, femininity, and emotional expression. The piece features floral motifs rendered in Bourgeois’ distinct style, where the flowers appear both delicate and assertive, capturing growth, decay, beauty, and transience. The flowers symbolise nature’s nurturing and delicate aspects, as well as femininity’s complexities, conveying deeper psychological narratives about life cycles, memory, and personal history.
Louise Bourgeois (1911 Paris – 2010 New York) grew up near Paris, where her parents ran a business restoring tapestries. Her childhood was marked by a complicated relationship to her father, who cheated on Bourgeois' mother with the British nanny. This traumatic experience haunted her throughout her life and was the major source of inspiration for her art. After pursuing studies in mathematics, Bourgeois attended a number of art schools in Paris. In 1938 she married the New York art historian Robert Goldwater (1907–1973) and moved to New York, where she raised three sons with him.