Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) made art for nearly eight decades and didn't get her first museum retrospective until age 71. Born in Paris, she grew up in her family's tapestry restoration business, filling in damaged sections of antique textiles as a child. Her mother's death in 1932 pushed her from mathematics into art. She studied under Fernand Léger, who recognized her talent as a sculptor, and moved to New York in 1938 after marrying American art historian Robert Goldwater.

Her early wooden Personnages sculptures (1945–1955) were slender, abstract forms representing people she'd left behind in France. But Bourgeois is best known for her giant spiders. Maman (1999), over 30 feet tall in bronze, stainless steel, and marble, was her tribute to her mother: "She was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider." The sculpture carries a sac of 32 marble eggs beneath its abdomen.

MoMA's 1982 retrospective, the first the museum had ever given a female sculptor, finally brought her wide recognition. She kept working until her death at 98, producing her Cells series (enclosed environments of found objects tied to memory) well into her 90s. Her work explored family, sexuality, trauma, and the body with an honesty that influenced generations. Casts of Maman stand outside Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the National Gallery of Canada.