Gertrude Abercrombie | |
|---|---|
 Abercrombie in 1951 | |
| Born | (1909-02-17)February 17, 1909 Austin, Texas, United States |
| Died | July 3, 1977(1977-07-03) (aged 68) |
| Education | University of Illinois Art Institute of Chicago |
| Known for | Painting |
Gertrude Abercrombie (February 17, 1909 – July 3, 1977) was an American painter based inChicago. Called "the queen of the bohemian artists", Abercrombie was involved in the Chicagojazz scene and was friends with musicians such asDizzy Gillespie,Charlie Parker, andSarah Vaughan, whose music inspired her own creative work.[1]
Abercrombie was born on February 17, 1909, inAustin, Texas.[2] Her parents, Tom and Lula Janes Abercrombie, were travelingopera singers who happened to be in Austin on the day of Gertrude's birth. The family lived inBerlin in 1913 to further her mother's career, but the beginning ofWorld War I caused the family to move back to the United States.[3] Upon their return the family lived inAledo, Illinois, before settling inHyde Park, Chicago in 1916. She was raised in a strictChristian Scientist environment at home.
She earned a degree inRomance languages from theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1929.[4] After studyingfigure drawing briefly at theArt Institute of Chicago, she took a year-long course incommercial art at theAmerican Academy of Art in Chicago, leading to her first job drawing gloves for Mesirow Department Store advertisements. She also worked briefly as an artist forSears.[3]
In 1932, she began to focus strictly on her art.[5] The following summer she made her first sale at an outdoorart fair in Chicago and received an honorable mention in the newspaper for the event.[3] In the mid-1930s she moved out of her family's home and became active in the regional art scene.[3] From 1934 to 1940 she served as a painter for theWorks Progress Administration and in 1934 theChicago Society of Artists held a solo show of her work.[3] During the 1930s and 1940s she also began creatingwoodcuts.
In 1940, she married lawyer Robert Livingston, and in 1942 gave birth to their daughter Dinah. In 1948 the couple divorced. That same year she married music critic Frank Sandiford, with Dizzy Gillespie performing at the wedding. The couple were active in thebohemian lifestyle andjazz scene of Chicago hence their connection with Gillespie. They met musicians through Sandiford and through Abercrombie's own skills as an improvisationalpianist. The couple would divorce in 1964.[3]
Within Abercrombie'savant-garde social circle she was the inspiration for the song "Gertrude's Bounce" byRichie Powell, who claimed that she walked "just like the way the rhythm sounds in the Introduction",[6] and she appeared as herself inJames Purdy'sGertrude of Stony Island Avenue and as a fictional character in Purdy'sMalcolm, Eustace Chisholm.[3]
By the late 1950s, her health declined as a result of financial trouble,alcoholism, andarthritis, and she became reclusive. After 1959, her paintings diminished in number as well as scale.[7] She required a wheelchair and was eventually bedridden. In the final year of her life, a major retrospective of her work was held at theHyde Park Art Center.[3] She died in Chicago on July 3, 1977. Her will established the Gertrude Abercrombie Trust which distributed her work and the work of other artists she owned to cultural institutions throughout the Midwest.[3]
Abercrombie painted many variations of her favored subjects: sparsely furnished interiors, barrenlandscapes,self-portraits, andstill-lifes. Many of her compositions feature a lone woman in a flowing gown, often depicted with attributes of sorcery: an owl, a black cat, acrystal ball, or abroomstick.[3] These works were often self-portraits, as she stated in an interview withStuds Terkel shortly before her death: "it is always myself that I paint".[8] Tall and sharp-featured, she considered herself ugly;[9] 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".[10] Abercrombie also drew inspiration from her dreams as a "self-proclaimed" source for her paintings to convey reality, but with illusions of fantasy.[11] The 1940s and '50s have been described as her most prolific and productive period; a time when she no longer painted many portraits, but retained the themes mentioned above.[3]
Abercrombie's mature works are painted in a precise, controlled style. She took little interest in other artists' work, although she admiredMagritte.[12] Largely self-taught, she did not regard her lack of extensive formal training as a hindrance.[13] 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.[4]
Her work evolved into incorporating her love for jazz music, inspired by parties andjam sessions she hosted in her Hyde Park home. Musicians such asSonny Rollins,Max Roach,Jackie Cain, and theModern Jazz Quartet were considered friends.Dizzy Gillespie described her as "the first bop artist. Bop in the sense that she has taken the essence of our music and transported it to another art form".[14]
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