Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery

Gertrude Abercrombie spent most of her life in Chicago, where she accumulated a wide circle of friends in the cultural sphere, becoming known as ‘queen of the bohemian artists’. She hosted parties and jazz sessions attended by figures including Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Thornton Wilder, all the while steadily gaining a reputation as a painter – a trajectory that reached its zenith in 1944, with a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Though apparently ebullient and sociable as a person, Abercrombie produced paintings with a sparse, gloomy quality, inspired by the Surrealist movement and populated by ghostly recurring images – cats, owls, bare trees, lone female figures, hats – that were often drawn from her own dreams. Many of her works recall the almost childlike eeriness of her contemporaries Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, both of which artists have seen growing critical and market interest in recent years. Abercrombie is yet to achieve their levels of fame – something the Carnegie Museum of Art may go some way to changing with this wide-ranging retrospective (co-organised by the Colby College Museum of Art), the most comprehensive display of her work yet (18 January–1 June).

Find out more from the Carnegie Museum of Art’s website.
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Search for Rest (1951), Gertrude Abercrombie. Photo: Sandy and Bram Dijkstra

Charlie Parker’leoleonos Favorite Painting (1946), Gertrude Abercrombie. Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Door and the Rock (1971), Gertrude Abercombie. Courtesy Karma Gallery

Where or When (Things Past) (1948), Gertrude Abercrombie. Madison Museum of Contemporary Art