An exhibition of works by Louise Bourgeois, a contemporary art icon known for her giant sculptures, is to open this week in Tel Aviv, a first in Israel.

The exposition of the late French-American artist's work titled "Twosome" opens Friday at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and runs until January 20.

The exhibition, which takes its name from the large and rarely exhibited installation at its centre, includes some 50 works.

The "Twosome" installation includes two large steel cylinders illuminated with red light, the smallest cylinder emerging from the biggest at a regular and mechanical rhythm.

"I think it's a very powerful piece because it sort of has multiple meanings, altogether in that one form," said Jerry Gorovoy, exhibition curator who was an assistant to Bourgeois.

"Could be the mother and child -- it's about inside and outside, it's about sexuality. I think it's the heart of the show, and the show was really organised around that one work, because I think it has this idea of duality."

Others of her well-known works are included, such as two giant steel spiders called "Spider Couple" and the phallus sculpture "Fillette".

Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 and married American art historian Robert Goldwater in 1938. She moved to the United States and became an American citizen.

She however did not gain wide notoriety until the 1970s with the appearance of striking work such as "The Destruction of the Father" and "Confrontation".

"Louise Bourgeois was torn by wounds linked to childhood trauma, then exile... then to the difficulties of being both a good mother -- she had three children -- the wife of a historian and known conservative, and artist," Marie-Laure Bernadac, a specialist on Bourgeois's work, told AFP.

A first retrospective of her work was organised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1982.

The artist was recognised by her native country with a retrospective at the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art in 1995.

She died in 2010 in New York at the age of 98.