Meet Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, the ‘Jazz Witch' Who Captivated the Art World
Katie White, Artnet, February 11, 2025
“The whole world is a mystery,” the painter Gertrude Abercrombie said in a 1977 interview, just months before her death at the age of 68.
The remark tied around a lifetime of Abercrombie’s work like a neat ribbon. From the 1930s until her death in 1977, the bohemian Chicago artist had painted pithy, surrealist scenes filled with solitary women, cats, luminous moons, fairytale towers, and halls lined with colorful doors. A spirit of magic, of lucid dreaming, characterized her work, and her vibrant personal world.
She was known as the “Queen of Chicago” by some, and the “jazz witch” by others. Born the daughter of itinerant opera singers, she took root in Chicago. Living in a four-story Victorian brownstone of fading elegance in the city’s eclectic Hyde Park neighborhood, Abercrombie (1909–1977) established herself as a salonnière in the tradition of Gertrude Stein (the other Gertrude was a huge influence on her, too), hosting the city’s energetic jazz scene with musicians from Charlie Parker to Dizzy Gillespie staying, and sometimes playing at her home. A tall woman, who’d been made to feel plain by her mother, Abercrombie often dressed elaborately, with leopard print coats, capes, and even pointy witch hats accessorizing her wardrobe.