Self-proclaimed, “Queen of Chicago” and “queen of the bohemian artists,” Gertrude Abercrombie was the face Surrealism in America.

It all began with Tom and Lula Abercrombie – two opera singers in love and on the road. They happened to be in Austin, Texas when their daughter was born (1909) but moved to Berlin shortly thereafter. They moved back to America pretty quickly though, because World War I was no place for a child…or two opera singers for that matter.

They ended up in Chicago, which their daughter would eventually claim as her artistic empire when she started the Chicago Salon. She was friends with jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie (who played at her second wedding), Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan. Gertrude threw parties where the booze and creativity flowed freely. She was the great American female Surrealist, refusing to take a backseat to any man. She was also a mediator between the art forms presented in her Salon and was dubbed “the first bop artist. Bop in the sense that she has taken the essence of [her jazz friends’] music and transported it to another art form.” 

Abercrombie didn’t consider herself to be the belle of the ball because of her height and sharp facial structure, so she purposefully wore a pointed, velvet witch hat to freak people out. (Witchcraft wasn’t exactly posh at the time. It was before The Craft). Honestly, this only makes her cooler to us!

She stated of her art, “I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace. I like and like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” Like her work, Gertrude Abercrombie was also “a little strange.”