Post War & Contemporary Art

We are grateful for the research conducted by Susan Weininger, Professor Emerita, Roosevelt University.

Provenance:

The Artist, 1954-1977

Private Collection

Sold: Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, Chicago, September 12, 2010, Lot 398

Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owners

Exhibited:

Chicago, Marshall Field and Co., 1954, no. 18 (as Our Three Cats in Grass)

Chicago, Stevens-Gross Gallery, March 1955, (as Three Cats in Grass)

Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Lake Forest, Illinois Art Fairs, 1955

Chicago, Chess House, 1956 (as Cats in Tall Grass)

Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, Gertrude Abercrombie: A Retrospective Exhibition, January 28 - March 5, 1977, no. 68

Literature:

Robert Storr, Susan Weininger, Robert Cozzolino, Robert, Dinah Livingston, Studs Terkel, Gertrude Abercrombie, New York, 2018, pp. 104; 381; 486, illus.

Lot Note:

Much like the jazz she adored, Gertrude Abercrombie riffed in her art with repeated symbols and images, combined to create otherworldly scenes rooted in the real. Her enigmatic paintings full of recurring cyphers caused her to be grouped with the Surrealists or magic realists. Abercrombie embraced the label, stating, “I am not interested in complicated nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange. My work comes directly from my inner consciousness and it must come easily. It is a process of selection and reduction (quoted in Donna Seaman, “Girl Searching,” Identity Unknown, p. 31). Her paintings are also deeply autobiographical and illuminate a complex psyche.

Cats appear frequently in Abercrombie’s paintings, as her household always included numerous beloved felines. She identified with and often used the animals as surrogates for herself. And, like many cat lovers, she saw them as individuals with their own quirky personalities. In Toddy, Possim, and Christine, 1954, the personas of the cats are conveyed through distinct colors, and they differ in size and visage from one another. The white and black clouds that hover over their heads indicate their temperaments. The cats are only visible from the shoulders up, which along with their human-like faces, makes them seem more than feline. Abercrombie certainly felt she had more in common with her cats than with many humans—she once said she could imagine giving birth to a cat but not to a human.