Crescent moons, black cats and empty rooms accompanied the witch archetype she fashioned for herself, forming the recurring vocabulary of a dreamlike world. ‘Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery’ brings that private mythology back into view.
Search for Rest (Nile River) 1951
Poised between Surrealism and magic realism, Gertrude Abercrombie forged a deeply personal language that is now reshaping her place within twentieth century American art and its history of women artists. Born in Austin in 1909, she spent most of her life in Chicago, immersed in its art and jazz scenes until her death in 1977. Her universe returns in ‘Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery’, opening at the Norton Museum of Art on October 31.
Mystery, independence and transformation shaped the witch archetype Abercrombie consciously made part of her identity. It became a way of imagining who she could be, while painting extended that process inward, giving private thoughts and emotions a visual form.
A Game of Kings, 1947
Two Ladders, 1947
Her work becomes especially intimate through repetition. Abercrombie appears directly in self portraits, while elsewhere her presence seems to migrate into solitary women, rooms, animals and uncanny objects. The self expands beyond the face until an entire painted world begins to feel autobiographical.
Solitude gives those images much of their emotional charge. It becomes even more striking beside her life in Chicago, where her Hyde Park home attracted musicians including Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. A life surrounded by music and company repeatedly produced images of stillness and isolation.
Where or When (Things Past), 1948
Strange Shadows (Shadow and Substance), 1950
Charlie Parker’s Favorite Painting, 1946
Abercrombie took a figure long associated with fear and persecution and claimed it for herself. Once sent to the stake, in her paintings she is the one in control, surrounded by symbols that belong to her. The gesture extends beyond her own mythology: what has been used to strip us of agency, make us invisible or afraid can be reclaimed as a language of our own, with the power to shape new realities.
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