25 December 1911, Paris, France -

31 May 2010, New York, USA

Louise Bourgeois is now widely considered as one of the most inventive and influential sculptors of the 20th century, although widespread recognition of her work came later in her career, when at the age of 71, she was honoured with a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York in 1982 - the first female artist to be so recognised. Her artwork was often an expression of profound emotion and traumatic experiences, and in the case of the shackle necklace, a metaphor for the imprisonment of women, of their suffocation within the confines of home, and of her anguish over her father's affair with her English tutor.