Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–77) has been the subject of renewed attention in recent years, culminating in a major travelling retrospective in 2025 that began at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art and explored her deep attachment to Chicago, as well as the ways in which she drew on European Surrealism and jazz music in her eerie paintings. In March, that show is moving to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and to accompany it the museum is holding ‘Gertrude & Friends’ – an exhibition that zooms out to place her in the context of the Milwaukee Magic Realists, a group led by John Wilde and Karl Priebe, whose members could be found in Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago (until July). The art produced by this loose band often focused on local themes – landscapes, Milwaukee shops, the animals of the Midwest – but gave them a fantastical air, inspired by everything from Japanese prints to German Expressionism. Many of these works are from the Layton Collection, which was built up by the local businessman Frederick Layton in the late 19th century and went on to form the founding collection of the Layton Art Gallery – one of the two institutions that merged in 1888 to form the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Find out more from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s website
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