Rome’s Famed Villa Borghese Hosts Louise Bourgeois Exhibition

Posing an intriguing dialogue between past and present, classical and contemporary, Rome’s Galleria Borghese has unveiled an exhibition dedicated to the works of French American artist Louise Bourgeois.

Sponsored by Fendi, Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious Memories features creations by the late modern and contemporary artist (1911–2010), whose storied career spanned seven decades.

Exploring themes such as memory, metamorphosis, and the manifestation of emotion and psychological states, Bourgeois is perhaps best known for her biomorphic sculptures and large-scale installations realized through a vast spectrum of forms and materials.

Bourgeois first learned about Galleria Borghese during her art history studies at the Louvre in the late 1930s. Thoroughly enamoured with the gallery, Rome, and Italy in general, she returned numerous times between the 1960s and 1990s to collaborate with various Italian art studios. Bourgeois sculpted many of her creations there, at times using marble from Pietrasanta and Carrara.