Louise Bourgeois for Capodimonte

vernissage: the 18th of October 2008
publisher : ELECTA NAPOLI
author: Louise Bourgeois

The exhibition has been planned and realized by the Special Superintendence for Historical, Artistic, Hethnoanthropological Heritage, by The Museum Complex of the ciy of Naples and by Louise Bourgeois' workshop; promoted by The Ministry of culture, Campania Region in collaboration with the province of Naples and the municipality of Naples.

"Louise Bourgeois for Capodimonte" Naples - Museum of Capodimonte 18 October 2008- 11 January 2009. For the first time in Italy will be inaugurated in Naples, in the Museum of Capodimonte, an exposition that includes the works created during the whole life of Louise Bourgeois. The artist - considered a modernity icon in the last decades - proposes a group of works that mark the path of her artistic production from the last century to nowadays, in a conscious reflection that combines poetics and individual assumptions with contemporary language and artistic vanguards.

She was born in Paris in the 1911,she moved with her husband Robert Goldwater to New York in the 1938, where she starts her artistic career, ranging, with her extensive production, in the use of different techniques, but always especially interested in the creation of sculptural shapes. Sculpture involves the body therefore it has the power to exorcize demons; it is defined the outline of her research always aimed to sound traumas, fears , sufferings. The first feelings of her childhood in France are conveyed in the objectivity of big and little sculptures through a large variety of materials, from the compactness of the marble to the soft of textiles and synthetical materials.

The exposition in Capodimonte comprises nearly sixty works, including two new installations of the famous series of the Cells, never exhibited before. The works will be placed in the whole route of the museum and in the new expositive spaces recently openend , in a dialogue with paintings and objects of the antique and prestigious permanent collections of the museum of Capodimonte, as evidence, once again, of the great attention that the Superintendence and his most renowned museum have always saved to contemporaty art. In Sala Causa will be exhibited some hanging sculptures, in mixed techniques, that have been realized since the '60 until today, among wich the famous Arch of Histerya (1993); in the main courtyard of the palace the big Maman(1999) will receive, with the disquieting height of over 9 metres, visitors, whereas Crouching Spider will take up the central space of the Sala degli Arazzi d'Avalos.

The cell, Peaux De Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles A' Vendre, it' s the box of her painful obsessions and will be staged- for the first time- in one of the room intended for neapolitan seventeeth- century painting , next to the two versions of the "Apollo and Marsia" realized by Jusepe De Ribera and Luca Giordano. In the big hall dedicated to Luca Giordano will be exhibited- for the first time too- the cell The last Climb, wich represents the rolling by of the time and the path of life. A precious collection of little sized works will find a worthy setting in the display cases of Wunderkammer, at the "noble floor" of the Museum , in a fascinating comparison with valuable handmades of the antique and renowned collection of Farnese Family. The exposition aims to testify, moreover, the multiplicity of techniques, materials and solutions that the artist uses, including the most recent graphics. In conclusion this is a tribute, more than deserved, to one of the most prominent and significant personalities in the survey of contemporary art.

Louise Bourgeois per Capodimonte