Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977)
Gertrude
Abercrombie grew up in rural Aledo, Illinois and Chicago, Illinois. Her
mother, Lula Jane Abercrombie, was a professional opera singer. Gertrude
showed talents in music and languages at an early age. When Gertrude was
five, her family lived in Europe for a year, and she became fluent in German.
She trained as a pianist of classical music but developed a life-long passion
for the improvisations of jazz.
In college Gertrude studied languages. She had only one year of art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and some commercial art courses at the American Academy of Art. Her first jobs were at department stores drawing merchandise for ads. A friend encouraged her to paint and exhibit her work in Chicago's no-jury system (anyone could enter work) of art galleries and associations.
Abercrombie attracted a large circle of friends to her Hyde Park apartment. They included Chicago artists Emil Armin and Julia Thecla, Wisconsin artist Karl Priebe, author Thornton Wilder, dancers Katherine Dunham and Sybil Shearer, and jazz musicians and composers such as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughn.
Gertrude worked for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Arts Project (WPA FAP) as an easel painter, earning $97 per month in the late 1930s. She exhibited locally, regionally, and later nationally in public and commercial galleries. After her death, retrospective exhibits of her work were shown at the Hyde Park Center in Chicago (January, 1977) and the Illinois State Museum (March 18 through May 17, 1991).