ALL HAIL THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIANS

Gertrude Abercrombie is having a long overdue moment. After decades of being one of the Chicago art world’s best kept secrets, Abercrombie is receiving the notoriety that was unfairly denied her for so long. In recent years, Abercrombie has had major solo exhibitions at KARMA gallery in New York, Illinois State Museum in Springfield, and the Elmhurst Art Museum and is set to have a major retrospective open at the prestigious Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in January, then traveling to the Colby College Museum of Waterville, Maine.

But it’s not just the museums that are taking notice. In the last five years, prices for works by Abercrombie have skyrocketed, with auction records falling almost as quickly as they can be set. In 2022, Freeman’s | Hindman brought a single-owner collection of 21 Abercrombie works to auction, and the collection more than doubled its presale estimate, selling for a combined $2.8 million. Just three months later, Freeman’s | Hindman broke the world auction record for Abercrombie, selling a typically surreal painting of a solitary woman, a barren landscape, a white horse, and a crescent moon for $437,500.

That record didn’t even last two full years as Freeman’s | Hindman once again broke this record in September of this year with the sale of The Magician in its September Post War and Contemporary Art auction for $469,900. The delightfully whimsical oil on canvas features a woman levitating above a sleek black chaise lounge, reminiscent of one from Abercrombie’s apartment. The scene is set against a backdrop of an austere interior, complete with a vibrant green rug and a black cat seemingly raising its paw to conjure the act of levitation—a testament to Abercrombie’s sharp wit and imaginative vision.

Abercrombie was born to travelling opera singers in 1909, which made her early years a whirlwind of travels and adventure before the family finally settled in Hyde Park in 1916. Her fine art career got off to a humble start, drawing illustrations for Mesirow Department Store and Sears advertisements. By the 1930s, though, she had become a full-time artist and a fixture of Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene, becoming fast friends with Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, and Dizzy Gillespie, who played at her wedding.

Abercrombie was so beloved in these circles that she became known as “the queen of bohemian artists.” Yet her artwork carries an almost overwhelming sense of loneliness and self-loathing. It’s remarkable that an artist who felt so unloved and unlovely despite her popularity and a circle of close, loving friends was able to transform these feelings into an art of power, beauty, and psychological truth that continues to speak to all those who have the privilege to see it.

For more information, visit freemansauction.com.