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Artist Index Gertrude Abercrombie (February 17, 1909 – July 3, 1977) was an American painter based in Chicago whose work is noted for its surrealistic imagery. Called "the queen of the bohemian artists," Abercrombie was involved in the Chicago jazz scene[1] and friends with musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan.[2]
Abercrombie in 1951
Abercrombie was born in Austin, Texas, on February 17, 1909. She was the only child of a pair of travelling opera singers. She began school in Aledo, Illinois before her family settled in Hyde Park, Chicago in 1916. Abercrombie earned a degree in Romance languages from the University of Illinois in 1929.[3] Afterward, she studied briefly at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and got a job drawing gloves for a department store. She began painting seriously in 1932, and worked for the WPA from 1933 to 1940. During the 1930s and 1940s, she sold her paintings at art fairs near the Art Institute of Chicago.[1] She also produced a number of woodcuts. She painted many variations of her favored subjects: sparsely furnished interiors, barren landscapes, self-portraits, and still-lifes. Many compositions feature a lone woman in a flowing gown, often depicted with attributes of sorcery: an owl, a black cat, a crystal ball, or a broomstick. In an interview with Studs Terkel shortly before her death, Abercrombie said of these women, "it is always myself that I paint".[4] Tall and sharp-featured, she considered herself ugly;[5] in life she sometimes wore a pointed velvet hat to accentuate her witch-like appearance, "enjoy[ing] the power this artifice gave her over others who would fear or recoil from her".[6] Abercrombie's mature works are painted in a precise, controlled style. She took little interest in other artists' work, although she admired Magritte.[7] Largely self-taught, she did not regard her lack of extensive formal training as a hindrance.[8] She said of her work: I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace. I like and like to paint simple things that are a little strange. My work comes directly from my inner consciousness and it must come easily. It is a process of selection and reduction.[3] In the 1940s and '50s, the weekly parties and jam sessions she hosted at her Hyde Park home attracted notable writers, artists, and musicians. Abercrombie befriended many jazz musicians, among them Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Jackie Cain, and the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Dizzy Gillespie appreciated Abercrombie's work and called her "the first bop artist. Bop in the sense that she has taken the essence of our music and transported it to another art form".[9] After 1959 she was beset by illness that was compounded by alcoholism, and her paintings diminished in number as well as scale.[10] She died in Chicago on July 3, 1977. Collections Public collections that hold works by Gertrude Abercrombie include the Ackland Art Museum at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the Art Institute of Chicago; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois; Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Smithsonian American Art Museum; and Western Illinois University Art Gallery. 1. ^ a b Richard Vine, "Where the Wild Things Were", Art in America, May 1997, pp. 98-111 References * Richard Vine, "Where the Wild Things Were", Art in America, May 1997, pp. 98-111. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; ==--==--==
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