Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery - by Eric Crosby & Sarah Humphreville (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A sumptuously produced retrospective on the beloved and under-published Chicago-based Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, the "queen of the bohemian artists"

This book is the definitive scholarly volume on Chicago artist Gertrude Abercrombie, who was a critical figure in the midcentury Chicago art and jazz scenes. Abercrombie was a creative force of singular vision who, from the 1930s until her death in 1977, produced enigmatic paintings full of personal significance. With a deft hand, a concise symbolic vocabulary and a restrained palette, she produced potent images that speak to her mercurial nature and her evolving psychology as an artist. Cats, owls, doors, moons, barren trees, seashells and searching female figures all converge in her mysterious works, which suggest a life of purposeful introspection and emotional struggle. Drawing consistently on her dreams as source material, Abercrombie said, "The whole world is a mystery."
Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery accompanies the artist's first retrospective since 1991: an eponymous exhibition which begins at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh before traveling to the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Gertrude Abercrombie was born in 1909 in Austin, Texas, and spent most of her life in Chicago, focusing on her art full time beginning in the early 1930s. Her work was in part inspired by jazz, and she was the host of legendary parties and jam sessions frequented by icons such as Dizzy Gillespie, who was a close friend. She died in Chicago in 1977, at age 68.

This book was published in conjunction with Carnegie Museum of Art; Colby College Museum of Art

Review Quotes

[A] quietly and weirdly charming artist.--Peter Plagens "The Wall Street Journal"

The disquieting dream logic of an Abercrombie composition [...] seems designed to unnerve more than to shock, a quintessentially American imagination that's less Salvador Dali than it is David Lynch.--Ed SImon "Hyperallergic"

While many museums and galleries have, over the past decade, focused on the rediscoveries of women artists who were forgotten over the decades or overlooked in their own times, the story of Gertrude Abercrombie has particularly captivated art lovers and the momentum around her continues to grow.--Katie White "Artnet"

This exhibition offers a comprehensive survey of [Gertrude Abercrombie's] simple weirdness.--Elena Clavarino "Air Mail"