‘Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery' Review: Modest Paintings, Major Effects

Peter Plagens, The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2025

“Incongruity is the secret to art,” said the Chicago Surrealist painter Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977)—and she gave herself plenty of discrepant ingredients to work with: “doors, moons, barren trees and stumps, seashells, masked and shrouded figures, towers and pyramids, clouds, dominoes and jacks, stairs, eggs, couches, letters, and ladders.” That inventory is courtesy of Eric Crosby, director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, where a retrospective exhibition, “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery,” is on view through June 1 before traveling to the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine.