WORK by one of the greatest women artists of the 20th century, Louise Bourgeois, goes on show this weekend at the mima gallery in Middlesbrough.

The exhibition, under the Artist Rooms project, coincides with one of previously unseen work at Tate Modern, where she is associated with the 30ft-high bronze spider, Maman, which dominated the Turbine Hall at its opening in 2000.

The mima show highlights late work, including pieces for the national Artist Rooms programme. Mima is the first of 18 associate partners in Britain to display this exhibition, which runs until October 12.

Born in France in 1911, the artist studied with Fernand Léger in Paris during the 1930s. She moved to New York in 1938 after her marriage to the art historian Robert Goldwater, who died in 1973.

Bourgeois died in 2010, continuing her prodigious output to within weeks of her death. The exhibition includes one of her final works, Untitled 2010.

Named as one of the top ten most subversive women artists in history, she has influenced many of today’s artists such as Jenny Holzer and Tracey Emin.

Artist Rooms is a collection of modern and contemporary art acquired for the nation by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland through the support of Anthony d’Offay with additional backers including the Art Fund.

Now in its sixth year of touring, it enables regional galleries and museums to show works that could otherwise only be visited in major centres.

Other pieces in the mima exhibition include Couple I 1996, Cell XIV (Portrait) 2000, Eyes 2001-5 and three late masterpieces, 10 am Is When You Come To Me 2006, and the cycle of 16 monumental drawings A L’Infini 2008-9.

Her work is deeply personal, but reflects 20th century art movements and raises universal questions about life and art, in particular ideas of womanhood and its various guises, including the roles of daughter, wife, mother and lover explored through recurring motifs such as spiders, spirals, the “arch of hysteria”, double forms and entwined fabric bodies.

It was not until 1982 that she began to receive wider public attention. That year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York gave her a retrospective, its first for a woman artist, and subsequently major exhibitions of her work were organised in Europe. She was the first artist commissioned by the Tate for the inauguration of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

This exhibition has been organised in collaboration with Jerry Gorovoy of the The Easton Foundation, which has lent a number of major sculptural works including Spiral Woman 1984 and Spider 1994, and the Louise Bourgeois Studio.

A gallery guide has been created by young people in Middlesbrough and there is a programme of talks and workshops. To find out more, see visitmima.com/bourgeois Other exhibitions at mima include Chance Finds Us, comprising work by eight artists living and working in the North-East, different in style but linked by similar themes, ranging from pencil drawings to colourful paintings and large sculptures to pieces made using automated drawing machines. This continues until September 4.