Louise Bourgeois

Don't be fooled by the giant, spindly spiders; Louise Bourgeois was an artist who truly knew how to spin a yarn, both literally and figuratively. For nearly a century, she transformed her childhood traumas—including a philandering father and his live-in mistress—into hauntingly beautiful sculptures. Initially a student of mathematics, she thankfully abandoned the world of fixed rules for the chaos of art, a practice she called her "guarantee of sanity." Rumor has it that her Sunday salons were so brutally honest they were nicknamed "Sunday, Bloody Sundays." It's also said that as a child, she would sculpt her father out of bread only to methodically dismember him—a rather direct form of art therapy. Whether fact or fiction, these tales only add to the legend of an artist who was as sharp, witty, and complex as her celebrated work.