Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery

A sumptuously produced retrospective on the beloved and under-published Chicago-based Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, the "queen of the bohemian artists" Published with Carnegie Museum of Art and Colby College Museum of Art. 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. 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