“Her landscapes and portraits read like journeys through the winding corridors of her mind.”
Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, Abert Family Associate Curator of American Art, takes us into the mysterious world of American painter Gertrude Abercrombie. The Milwaukee Art Museum is the only Midwestern venue to present Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery, the first nationally touring retrospective of her career.
A critical yet under-recognized figure of the 20th-century Chicago art scene, Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977) was a woman of paradoxes. She remained in Chicago for most of her life, yet her art was connected to international movements such as Surrealism. Though sometimes regarded as a recluse, her circle of friends included queer painters and Black jazz musicians, among them Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Her paintings offered a way to question her hopes and fears, while also engaging with major issues of her time, from racial discrimination to urban renewal. Amusing and mysterious—often both at the same time—her images conveyed what she described as the “simple things that are a little strange.” Over the years, she developed a rich symbolic vocabulary, making a distinctive contribution to American art history.
Abercrombie’s life and art were deeply rooted in the Midwest. Aledo, Illinois—where she spent part of her childhood—became the backdrop for many early works, characterized by a palette of blues, grays, and greens. Some paintings reflect her interest in rural architecture, while others evoke the pastoral landscape of the region, often centered on a solitary figure. This connection to her childhood is most evident in Tree at Aledo (1938). Although based on a photograph of an actual tree in town, the painting isolates it from its surroundings, encapsulating both the identity of Aledo and perhaps that of the artist.
After she moved into her own apartment in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood in 1935, Abercrombie’s career flourished. Over the next two decades, she produced hundreds of paintings, many at miniature scale. Her compositions emphasized themes of love and struggle, and reflected her interest in exploring her identity. Referred to affectionately as “Queen Gertrude” by her friends, she added this royal persona to her compositions. Amid this period of commercial success, she wrote to her closest friend, the Milwaukee artist Karl Priebe: “I’m painting like crazy again.”
Throughout her career, Abercrombie returned to earlier subjects and incorporated personal memory into her paintings, reflecting on the passage of time. She blurred the boundaries between physical and imagined spaces, contemplating themes of decay and rebirth. Her landscapes and portraits read like journeys through the winding corridors of her mind, populated with recurring symbols—crooked trees, sofas, tents, staircases, doors, pyramids, and animals such as owls, cats, lions, and giraffes. As she observed, “the whole world is a mystery,” a statement that speaks to the opportunity of liberation and self-discovery she found through art making.
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, and Sarah Humphreville, Lunder Curator of American Art, Colby College Museum of Art, with Cynthia Stucki, curatorial assistant, Carnegie Museum of Art
Learn more about the exhibition and related programs at mam.org/whole-world.
Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery
March 27–July 19, 2026
Baker/Rowland Galleries
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Leadership sponsors
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Friends of Art
Supporting sponsor
Mary Allmon, Marietta Investment Partners
Contributing sponsor
The Milwaukee art Museum extends its sincere thanks to the Visionaries for their support of the exhibition program.
Mark and Debbie Attanasio
Donna and Donald Baumgartner
Murph Burke
Bill and Sandy Haack
The Helmerich Trust
Kenneth and Alice Kayser
Joan Lubar and John Crouch
Jeff and Gail Yabuki
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Header image: Gertrude Abercrombie, Search for Rest (Nile River) (detail), 1951. Oil on Masonite. 24 × 36 in. Collection of Sandra and Bram Dijkstra