Gertrude Abercrombie:
The Whole World Is a Mystery

Scaife Gallery 1 On view through June 1, 2025

Gertrude Abercrombie (American, 1909–1977) was a critical figure in the mid-20th-century Chicago art scene and a creative force who, from the 1930s until her death in 1977, produced enigmatic paintings populated with objects and figures of personal significance. With a deft hand, a concise symbolic vocabulary, and a restrained palette, she created potent images that speak to her mercurial nature and her evolving psychology as an artist. Cats, owls, snails, doors, moons, barren trees, seashells, forking paths, and masked figures all converge in her mysterious works, which suggest a life of wistful introspection and emotional struggle. Drawing consistently on her own dreams as source material, Abercrombie said, “The whole world is a mystery.”

This exhibition presents a rare opportunity for museum visitors to appreciate—in significant depth—Abercrombie’s highly personal language that draws on surrealist and magic realism approaches to probe deeply into the nature of things. Featuring loans from important institutional and private collections, Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery is the most comprehensive museum presentation of the artist’s work to date.

Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery is co-organized by Carnegie Museum of Art and Colby College Museum of Art, and is curated by Eric Crosby, Henry J. Heinz II Director, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Vice President, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and Sarah Humphreville, Lunder Curator of American Art, Colby College Museum of Art, with Cynthia Stucki, curatorial assistant, Carnegie Museum of Art.

On View at Colby College Museum of Art July 12, 2025–Jan. 11, 2026.

About the Artist

Gertrude Abercrombie was born in 1909 in Austin, Texas. She grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago but also spent significant time in her father’s hometown of Aledo, Illinois, which would later become a source of inspiration for her paintings. She earned a degree in Romance languages at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1929, after which she pursued a year-long course in commercial art at the American Academy of Art and may also have briefly attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1932, Abercrombie began her career as a professional artist, an ambition that was forwarded when she gained employment on the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA/FAP) from 1935–1940. She showed her work widely, including in the Art Institute of Chicago’s annual exhibitions and at avant-garde venues like the Katharine Kuh Gallery. By the late 1930s, Abercrombie had developed her mature style, creating tightly executed paintings populated by personal symbols that pulse with mystery and which have been identified with surrealism, magic realism, and the fantastic. She worked in this vein for the remainder of her career, but her output gradually decreased toward the end of her life due to ongoing health struggles. Abercrombie was also well known as the host of parties and jam sessions, which were attended by her artist, writer, and jazz musician friends.

Selected Works

Read, Watch, Listen

ink drawing of a person wearing a berret next to a cat by Gertrube Abercrombie

Gertrude’s Bounce: A Gertrude Abercrombie Playlist

Gertrude Abercrombie was a fervent listener of jazz and organized regular jam sessions at her home in Hyde Park, Chicago. This playlist combines the jazz she loved and songs with themes that are found in her work and life.

Playlist

Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery

This book is the definitive scholarly volume on artist Gertrude Abercrombie, who was a critical figure in the mid-20th-century Chicago art and jazz scenes.

Publications

Support

Major support for the exhibition has been provided by Carnegie Museum of Art’s Virginia Kaufman Fund and James H. and Idamae B. Rich Exhibition Endowment Fund and Colby College Museum of Art’s Barbara Alfond

Fund for Exhibitions and Publications and Everett and Florence Turner Exhibition Fund.

Additional support for the exhibition has been provided by Nancy and Woody Ostrow, Valerie Carberry and Richard Wright, the Robot Family Foundation, Schoelkopf Gallery, and Waqas Wajahat.

Generous support for the exhibition catalogue has been provided by Karma and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Additional support has been provided by Carnegie Museum of Art’s Beal Family Publication Fund and Colby College Museum of Art’s Mirken Family Publications Fund.

Carnegie Museum of Art’s exhibition program is supported by the Carnegie Museum of Art Exhibition Fund and The Fellows of Carnegie Museum of Art.

Carnegie Museum of Art is supported by The Heinz Endowments and Allegheny Regional Asset District. Carnegie Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.