Born from the collaboration between two important Florentine museum centers, the exhibition project Louise Bourgeois in Florence introduces for the first time in the Tuscan capital the works of one of the great protagonists of international contemporary art. Thanks to the simultaneous installation in two different exhibition venues, the exhibitions at the Museo Novecento and the Museo degli Innocenti will allow visitors to get to know the art of Louise Bourgeois up close. In the first venue, almost one hundred works are exhibited as part of Do Not Abandon Me; the second houses the sculpture Cell XVIII (Portrait) which generates an immediate artistic resonance with the Florentine museum complex and its original social function. Until October 20th.
A DOUBLE EXHIBITION IN FLORENCE TO CELEBRATE THE ART OF BOURGEOIS
To investigate the powerful symbolic charge that characterizes Bourgeois’ works and her incessant artistic investigation, often focused on the relationship between psychology and emotions and on the mother-child relationship, the exhibition Do Not Abandon Me brings together a rich selection of gouaches and drawings made by the artist in the last years of his life. Alongside this corpus, works such as Spider Couplethe famous spider-shaped sculpture positioned in the centre of the museum’s Renaissance cloister, or the unpublished Spider, presented as an absolute preview to the public of the Florentine exhibition. The exhibition process ideally connects to the work exhibited at the Museo degli Innocenti, Cell XVIII (Portrait)one of the last “cells” created by Louise Bourgeois. It is an installation whose enigmatic iconography, which refers to the figures of the Madonna della Misericordia, is perfectly linked to the context of the complex designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, which was originally dedicated to welcoming disadvantaged children.
THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE ON LOUISE BOURGEOIS IN FLORENCE
The exhibition at the Museo Novecento, curated by Philip Larratt-Smith and Sergio Risaliti, was promoted on the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of the Florentine center dedicated to 20th century and contemporary art. The parallel staging of the two exhibitions in Florence confirms the great cultural importance of the work of an artist to whom the Italian public is devoting great attention, as demonstrated by the exhibitions currently underway in Rome, at the Borghese Gallery and at Villa Medici, and at Naples.
[Immagine in apertura: Installation view of Louise Bourgeois, Do Not Abandon Me, Museo Novecento, 2024. Photo by Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by S.I.A.E., Italy and VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY]
