Label
Gertrude Abercrombie was a well-known figure in Chicago. She is remembered for her personal eccentricity; the salons she presided over at her Hyde Park row house, which attracted jazz musicians, writers, and visual artists; the regular spot she staked out at the Hyde Park Art Fair each year, with her old Rolls Royce parked nearby; and her completely distinctive imagery. Sometimes referred to as Surrealist or Magical Realist, it is in fact sui generis, her own vision and style. Like many artists who remained in Chicago for the majority of their careers, Abercrombie followed her own path, developing away from the cultural dictates of the art centers on the East and West coasts. "Split Personality" treats themes she explored a number of times, with subtle variations. Here she included an image of herself in a barren room, with one of her possessions, a stoneware pitcher, placed strategically below her floating torso, as if she has risen, genie-like, out of it. The image combines pathos and humor, alluding to the artist’s feelings of dissociation and fragmentation, and her interest in magic, wordplay, and psychoanalysis. Much more interested in ideas than technique, she might have been describing this painting when she said, “Art has to be real ‘crazy,’ real personal and real real, or it is nowhere. If it doesn’t make you laugh, it’s not so good either.”
–Susan Weininger, from DPAM’s 2011 catalogue “Re: Chicago”Label
Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–77)
Split Personality, 1954
Oil on masonite
Collection of DePaul Art Museum,
Art Acquisition Endowment Fund, 2010.21
Gertrude Abercrombie, a major figure of
the Midwestern Surrealists from the mid-
twentieth century, is known for painting
illusive environments that meld reality and
dream. Abercromie paints bare scenes,
typically set at night in domestic interiors or
strange rural landscapes, drawing from her
unconscious mind. The elongated woman
that routinely occupies her paintings is a
loose representation of herself: “everything
is autobiographical in a sense, but kind of
dreamy.” In Split Personality, she explores
disassociation and fragmentation of the self by
placing her figure in an ambiguous room fit for
the solitude and pain incited by self-reflection.
Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–77)
Desdoblamiento de personalidad, 1954
Óleo sobre masonita
Colección del Museo de Arte DePaul,
Fondo para la Adquisición de Arte, 2010.21
Gertrude Abercrombie, una figura destacada
de los surrealistas del Medio Oeste de
mediados del siglo xx, es famosa por pintar
ambientes ilusorios que mezclan la realidad
y el sueño. Abercrombie pinta escenas de
bares, usualmente nocturnas, en interiores
domésticos o extraños paisajes rurales
tomados de su inconsciente. La mujer
alargada que suele ocupar sus pinturas es
una representación imprecisa de ella misma:
“en cierto sentido, todo es autobiográfico,
pero un poco onírico”. En Desdoblamiento
de personalidad, explora la disociación y la
fragmentación del yo al colocar su figura
en un cuarto ambiguo, adecuado para la
soledad y el dolor que incita la autorreflexión.