Ode a la Bievre

New, never used. When Louise Bourgeois was 8 years old in 1919, her family moved to the Parisian suburb of Antony where the Bièvre River “cut across the garden in a straight line.” The river was key to their relocation as it was imperative to the family’s business of tapestry restoration for the washing of the tapestries.

In 2002, Bourgeois would distill her emotions and memories of the river and the garden in an important unique fabric book entitled ODE À LA BIÈVRE. In the book she reminisces through images and text, “With the soil from that river we planted geraniums, masses of peonies, and beds of asparagus …and honeysuckle that smelled so sweet in the rain.” Using her own garments as raw material to make sewn fabric collages, she evoked feelings and memories through lines, shapes and colors. Years later, Bourgeois was to go back to the house with her own family only to find the river to no longer exist, “only the trees that my father had planted along its edge remained as a witness.”

Louise Bourgeois is an internationally renowned artist who has been exhibited and collected by the leading museums around the world. Major retrospectives of her work will be shown at the Tate Gallery, London (fall 2007) and at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.