Louise Bourgeois in Bourgeois x Giacometti
9 January—26 May 2024
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark
In the North Wing, Alberto Giacometti, whose works constitute a significant pillar of Louisiana's collection, has been joined for the first time by Louise Bourgeois – another of the 20th century's all-time great artists – and her iconic sculpture 'Spider Couple'.
Entirely exceptionally, the sculpture ‘Walking Man’ by Alberto Giacometti is on loan this spring, and in its usual place you will instead find the monumental ‘Spider Couple’ from 2003 by French-American Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010): a rather special meeting between two artists who are beacons of 20th-century art history, as well as of the Louisiana Collection. Giacometti and Bourgeois knew each other, and their art expresses a lifelong preoccupation with the human body and psyche, albeit in very different ways.
The story of Giacometti at Louisiana began with an exhibition in 1965, with the collection being established from then on and into the 1980s. Bourgeois’ art was first on show at Louisiana in an exhibition in 2003, and since then, the museum has acquired highly significant works by the artist.
In addition to the spectacular sculptures, selected works on paper from the Louisiana Collection by both Bourgeois and Giacometti are also on show. Here, both artists’ lifelong fascination with the human body can be seen, and although the rhythmic lines recur in the works, Bourgeois and Giacometti render the body in very different ways.