Louise Bourgeois - Untitled - image-1
Louise Bourgeois - Untitled - image-2
Louise Bourgeois - Untitled - image-1Louise Bourgeois - Untitled - image-2

Lot 8 D

Louise Bourgeois - Untitled

Auction 1177 - overview Cologne
17.06.2021, 18:00 - Modern/Contemporary Art - Evening Sale
Estimate: 40.000 € - 50.000 €
Result: 50.000 € (incl. premium)

Louise Bourgeois

Untitled
1947

Ink and charcoal on card.. 20.2.x 12.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed 'Louise Bourgeois'. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age.

More than in any other medium, the breadth of Louise Bourgeois' artistic creativity is most evident in her drawing. Her early work already encompassed many drawings in various materials - pencil, ink, charcoal, chalk - in which the artist captured found object forms, aphorisms and emotions in surrealist-looking pictorial ideas. She often covers the same themes, returns to them again and again, developing reflected artistic claims from them which are condensed - sometimes many years later - in her sculptural work.
“The realistic nocturnal drawings are the triumph over bad memories, they are necessary to extinguish them and to free oneself from them … the most abstract among them are pleasant exercise - the wish to fall asleep and to find peace in a rhythm, in a model, and wrapped in caresses.” (Louise Bourgeois, quoted after: Louise Bourgeois. Der Ort des Gedächtnisses. Skulpturen, Environments und Zeichnungen 1946-1995, exhib.cat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg 1996, p.118-120).
Buildings, equipment, human figures or plant details can be identified in her drawings. Such set pieces unite to form fragile, semi-abstract objects that confront the viewer with barely penetrable riddles - archaic, organic and seemingly not of this world.

Certificate

We would like to thank Louise Bourgeois Studio, New York, for helpful information.

Provenance

Robert Miller Gallery, New York; Galerie Lelong, Zurich (label of each verso); private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Literature

Jerry Gorovoy et.al. (ed.), Louise Bourgeois, Drawings, New York 1988, cat.no.40, n.p. with illus.

Exhibitions

Berkeley 1996 (University Art Museum), New York (The Drawing Center), Boston (MIT List Visual Art Center), Louise Bourgeois, Drawings (label verso)

Paris 1995 (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), Louise Bourgeois (label verso)

Zurich 1989 (Galerie Lelong), Louise Bourgeois, 100 Zeichnungen, exhib.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