Gross McCleaf Gallery will screen the film Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine (2008) as part of the programming for Fortitude at 50: A Resilient Five Decades at Gross McCleaf Gallery.

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine is a cinematic journey inside the life and imagination of an icon of modern art. As a screen presence, Louise Bourgeois is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw. There is no separation between her life as an artist and the memories and emotions that affect her every day. Her process is on full display in this extraordinary documentary. As an artist, Louise Bourgeois has for six decades been at the forefront of successive new developments, but always on her own powerfully inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honored with a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In the decades since, she has created her most powerful and persuasive work that has been exhibited, studied and lectured on worldwide. Filmed with unparalleled access between 1993 and 2007, Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine is a comprehensive and dramatic documentary of creativity and revelation. It is an intimate, human and educational engagement with an artist’s world.

Curated by Morgan Hobbs and Elizabeth Johnson

Since Estelle Shane Gross opened Gross McCleaf Gallery on the second floor of 1713 Walnut Street in 1969, women have been a cornerstone of operations and exhibitions. In (re)Focus, GMG will celebrate this rich history by exhibiting female artists and collaborators from the last half-century of gallery programming. An artist documentary series will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition. A video will feature pictures and memorabilia with Estelle Gross’ 1989 interview with the Smithsonian Archives of American Art project, and commentary from the current owner, staff, and former director and owner Sharon Ewing.