I paint the way I do because I’m just plain scared.

October 15, 2017 4:03 PM

Known in Chicago as the Queen of the Bohemian Artists ; in her papers is an elegy from Studs Terkel who had interviewed her for radio - “To Queen Gertrude, You are regal—And we love you—Studs.”
Mainly self taught, Gertrude Stein in 1935 advised her to ‘draw better'.
She lived and moved in the Chicago Jazz scene inspiring Richie Powell to write Gertrude's Bounce as she walked "just like the way the rhythm sounds in the Introduction". Her home in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago became a salon of sorts for such writers and musicians as Dizzy Gilespie, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holiday, among others.
posted by adamvasco (5 comments total)

A Google on her name brings up a ton of images of her work. Less bizarre for the sake of being bizarre than Dali, and I adore her use of color. It gives her work a very pleasing eeriness.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 5:27 PM on October 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love Gertrude Abercrombie. Much of her art I would absolutely hang where I could see it all the time.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:52 PM on October 15, 2017

It's embarassing sometimes how much I don't know about Chicago as a long time resident but fortunately Metafilter and Studs Terkel have my back to fill in blanks. Thanks for this post.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:14 PM on October 15, 2017

I hope she re-advised Stein to write something that anyone but grad students writing theses on Gertrude Stein would read in 50 years.
posted by thelonius at 9:20 PM on October 15, 2017

(Um, it really would not have hurt to put her name in the FPP.)
posted by maryr at 12:28 PM on October 16, 2017