Gertrude Abercrombie: Good Witch of the American Absurd

Walker Mimms, The New York Times, July 2, 2026

“Do you know there are good witches and there are bad witches?” the Chicago-based painter Gertrude Abercrombie once asked a boy in the street. “I am a good witch.”

Since her revival eight years ago at the Karma gallery in Manhattan, Abercrombie (1909-77) has gained an overdue reputation as a supernatural miniaturist whose “Twilight Zone”-ian landscapes and improbable interiors skirted classical Surrealism. With wry bleakness she dragged the unease of wartime well into the decades of American prosperity.

Two shows at the Milwaukee Museum of Art embrace her in all her enchanting eccentricity.