Les Fleurs, 2009

Limited edition of 100

At the end of her life, Bourgeois created several series of red gouache drawings depicting family, birth, the mother-child dyad, and flowers. She painted directly onto wet paper, which diffused her lines and created diluted fields of red and pink. Bourgeois liked the element of chance this process provided, as random drips and stains often occurred as she worked. For her, red was symbolic of blood, pain, and the body, but also of the intensity of “the emotions involved.” The five blossoms on this stem reference the five members of her family—both the one she grew up in and the one she shared with her husband.