ABERCROMBIE, Gertrude; CROSBY, Eric (ed.); HUMPREVILLE, Sarah (ed.)
Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery

When you’re a good painter, you know how to put the paint on just where you want it and sometimes mine fails meserably but I can think up the dieas. The art has to do with ideas here.
—Gertrude Abercrombie

This book is the definitive scholarly volume on Chicago artist Gertrude Abercrombie, who was a critical figure in the midcentury Chicago art and jazz scenes[yes there is a photograph of her with Dizzy Gillespie!]. Abercrombie was a creative force of singular vision who, from the 1930s until her death in 1977, produced enigmatic paintings full of personal significance. With a deft hand, a concise symbolic vocabulary and a restrained palette, she produced potent images that speak to her mercurial nature and her evolving psychology as an artist. Cats, owls, doors, moons, barren trees, seashells and searching female figures all converge in her mysterious works, which suggest a life of purposeful introspection and emotional struggle. Drawing consistently on her dreams as source material, Abercrombie said, “The whole world is a mystery.” [publishers’ note]

Foreword by Eric Crosby, Jacqueline Terrassa + Text by Katie Anania, Donna Cassidy, John Corbett + Interview from 1977 by Studs Terkel + Chronology by Cynthia Stucki.

Published by Delmonico Books / Carnegie Museum of Art, 2025
Design by Purtill Family Business
Monographs / Outsider Art