“Surrealism is meant for me because I am a pretty realistic person, but I don’t like everything I see,” Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977) once said. “So I dream that it has changed. Then I change it the way I want.”
Abercrombie’s stark, symbol-rich landscapes and enigmatic oil-painted portraits were influenced by the European surrealist movement, magical realism and her own dreams. A leading figure in the arts in Chicago, she was also involved in the city’s jazz scene, counting musical greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan among her friends.
The artist’s mystical works “suggest a life of wistful introspection and emotional struggle,” according to a statement for the upcoming exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie: The whole world is a mystery at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The exhibition and accompanying catalog offer visitors the opportunity to experience the artist’s deeply personal work in depth, with access to artworks from a range of private and public collections, all gathered in one place.
Born in Austin, Texas, Abercrombie grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and spent some time in her father’s hometown of Aledo, Illinois. The small town in the northwestern part of the Midwest state eventually became a source of inspiration for her atmospheric paintings.
The artist studied Romance languages at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and then took a commercial art course at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where she may also have briefly attended the School of the Art Institute.
In 1932, Abercrombie began her career as a professional artist, which was soon stimulated by the support of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (FPA/WPA). The program ran from 1935 to 1943 and provided economic relief to artists and craftsmen during the Great Depression. Along with Abercrombie, a slew of notable artists took part Arshile Gorky And Lucile Blanch Unpleasant Jackson Pollock And Diego Riveraamong many others.
The Federal Art Project established community centers across the United States, supporting the careers and livelihoods of approximately 10,000 artisans who contributed an estimated 400,000 easel paintings, prints, murals, posters and other works during the eight-year life of the program.
Abercrombie participated in the FAP/WPA from 1935 to 1940. Around this time she showed her work widely, including in annual exhibitions presented by the Art Institute of Chicago and at venues such as Katharine Kuh Galleryone of the city’s first commercial galleries showcasing avant-garde work.
Motifs such as lonely women, dead trees, forking paths, grim landscapes, doors, cats, towers and shells return in her work. Abercrombie noted that the scenes were always “pretty real,” blending facets of the real and the fantastic. “Only mystery and fantasy have been added,” she said. “All the foolishness has been taken out. It becomes my own dream.”
In “Demolition Doors” (1964), for example, a black feline parks in front of a series of three multicolored panels that take up most of the frame, behind which is a gray, largely empty landscape that could be either indoors or outdoors. Portal-like, the doors represent choices you make about which direction to take, which threshold to cross. The cat stands as a sentinel, waiting for the viewer’s (and by extension, the artist’s) final decision. “The whole world is a mystery,” she had said.
Abercrombie associated some of its recurring symbols with the persona of a witch – historically an identity associated primarily with women – which she sometimes embraced in her own fashion choices. She occasionally donned a pointed velvet hat to accentuate her sharp features and tall figure. The female figure, including Abercrombie’s own likeness, is often shown traversing barren terrain, reclining in pensive tranquility, or interacting with otherworldly forces.
In an interview with Studs Terkel shortly before her death, Abercrombie said that “I always paint myself.” In ‘Split Personality’ (1954), for example, a woman in a blue dress, standing in an unadorned room, is cut in half at the waist. Her torso and head float above a jar and she reaches for her legs, but the shadow on the wall to the left shows a full figure – the sum of two parts – as a way of suggesting that appearances can be deceiving.
“With a deft hand, a concise symbolic vocabulary and an understated palette, she created powerful images that speak to her whimsical nature and her evolving psychology as an artist,” according to an exhibition statement.
Later in his life, Abercrombie’s artistic output gradually declined as persistent health problems related to arthritis and alcoholism took their toll. She became more withdrawn as she eventually required a wheelchair before being confined to bed. The year she died, a major retrospective of her work was held at the Hyde Park Art Center, and her will established the Gertrude Abercrombie Trust, which distributed her work and pieces by others in her collection to cultural institutions in the Midwest.
Gertrude Abercrombie: The whole world is a mystery opens January 18 in Pittsburgh and runs through June 1. The exhibition then travels to Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, opening July 12 and running through January 11, 2026. Find more about the Carnegie website.
