Midwestern Moons and Mystery Doors: Gertrude Abercrombie’s Chicago Surrealism Finds Its Moment
A woman in a pink gown, pinned to the wall and blocked from a blue door by giant needles—Gertrude Abercrombie’s paintings are full of such uncanny scenes, yet they’re rooted in the everyday landscapes and interiors of mid-century Chicago. Abercrombie, a fixture of the city’s jazz and queer communities, painted for four decades, distilling personal and cultural anxieties into spare, dreamlike images: crescent moons, solitary women, enigmatic doors, and ever-present cats.
Her style, often labeled Surrealist, diverged from European peers—her worlds are not pure fantasy, but Midwestern rooms and fields transformed by mood and memory. Doors and seashells, recurring motifs, hint at both real and imagined thresholds, shaped by Chicago’s changing neighborhoods. Long overlooked as a "regional" eccentric, Abercrombie’s subtle, inventive vision now draws new acclaim, her work echoing with today’s search for meaning in the familiar and the strange.
Sometimes, the most mysterious worlds are built from the rooms we know best.
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