Artist Louise Bourgeois, whose sculptures of giant spiders were exposed in the Tate gallery in London is dead. She was 98 and died of a heart attack.

Louise Bourgeois was regarded as one of the most important artists. Born in 1911 in Paris, she studied under Léger before moving to New York in 1938. Bourgeois had always been at the forefront of new developments in art, but had pursued a wholly personal path, removed from the major avant-garde movements of her time.

She explored her ideas in painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance, using extraordinarily varied media, from wood and stone to latex and rubber. However, this breadth of materials was balanced by an almost obsessive continuity of subject matter, often deeply autobiographical in its references to Bourgeois’ childhood.