LOUISE BOURGEOIS: THE COMPLETE PRINTS & BOOKS

Photogravure

Photogravure is employed primarily for transferring images onto printing plates, and Bourgeois occasionally used it for this purpose. Her first opportunity came in the mid-1980s, when she met printer Deli Sacilotto, a specialist in the technique. This was just before she returned to printmaking in a sustained fashion, and she made photogravures of existing drawings in response to several requests for works to benefit causes. She then varied the editions with colored inks and papers.

Bourgeois’s most concerted effort with photogravure arose from her desire to complete the edition of He Disappeared into Complete Silence, an illustrated book she had begun in the 1940s. She was distressed that she lost the engraved printing plates—since she routinely saved everything—and had the idea of making photogravure plates to replicate them, with Sacilotto’s assistance. This project did not get very far. She also attempted to reproduce the plates in engraving, with printer Christian Guérin. Ultimately a second edition of the book was completed in 2005, working with Harlan & Weaver, and the initial transfer of images was accomplished in photogravure, with Renaissance Press of Ashuelot, NH.