Louise Bourgeois released He Disappeared into Complete Silence in 1947 with an announced edition of 54 copies, but never completed it. Only 12 copies have since been located. This publication, issued to benefit the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, completes that edition. It is comprised of 30 copies with an additional 12 artist’s proofs.


Included here are text pages printed and remaining from 1947, 10 engravings after those issued in 1947 (reworked in engraving over photogravure, with dry-point, aquatint and water color additions), and one engraving with dry-point conceived in 2001-02. Harlan and Weaver, New York, oversaw the project and editioned the engravings. Renaissance Press, Hinsdale, New Hampshire, executed the photogravure. The Grenfell Press, New York, printed the text pages created in 2005. Claudia Cohen Bookbinder, Seattle, Washington, produced the portfolio-style cover, modeled after the 1947 version.



He disappeared into complete silence signals Bourgeois’ independence and personal growth; it reflects her distancing from painting and it marks her own independent stylistic identity in the post war milieu. This work creates a universe where eternal loneliness meets absurdity and miscommunications, but never resignation. The booklet starts with a parable in which a woman is waiting in silence and ends with the image of New York flooded by the Hudson River. The engravings are inhabited by isolated geometrical and anthropomorphic constructions, whereas the parables’ characters are on a perilous threshold, yet are never excluded from life.