Post War & Contemporary Art

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

Provenance:

The Artist

The Estate of Lorraine and John Birks 'Dizzy' Gillespie, gift from the Artist

Sold: Dawson & Nye Auctioneers, Bloomfield, New Jersey, September 14, 2005, Lot 717 (part)

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Lot Note:

In the early 1950s, Abercrombie began to create tiny paintings, often mounted as pins or brooches (or intended for that purpose) and sold at art fairs, to increase her income after her marriage to Bob Livingston dissolved and she married Frank Sandiford, a much less reliable provider. A consistent source of money, she continued to make these diminutive paintings into the late 1960s. Many of these miniature paintings included different shaped shells as their subject, with variations in detail, as was typical of the artist. The shell in Untitled (For Dizzy Gillespie) is certainly something Abercrombie owned and used as a model, with its distinctive tiny, almost circular crack in the lower left area. It is seen in numerous iterations. She also made these very small shell paintings to give to friends and family as special gifts.

 

In 1944, Abercrombie moved into a house at 5728 S. Dorchester, in Hyde Park, Chicago, which became a nexus for jam sessions and parties that began on Sunday afternoon and stretched late into the evening. The artist had been introduced to jazz by her friend Karl Priebe, and her relationship to that community became a central part of her life. Musically talented herself (she had the rare ability to whistle and hum at the same time, in harmony) she often played accompaniment on the piano. Abercrombie met Dizzy Gillespie through this lively scene. Her relationship with Gillespie became very important to her, and it was one to which she often referred. In late 1976, Gillespie visited Gertrude for the last time before her death the following year. She was physically compromised, suffering from severe arthritis and other ailments that left her confined to the first floor of her house, but still mentally acute and looking forward to her retrospective that was to open at the end of January 1977. 

 

In a conversation between Dizzy and Gertrude recorded and reported by Florence Hamlisch Levinson in Chicago Magazine (February 1977, pp. 8-12), the two old friends reminisced about the wonderful parties at her home, where jazz musicians mingled with artists and writers, music filled the rooms and liquor flowed liberally. Dizzy dubbed Abercrombie a “Bop artist” whose work was to painting what jazz was to music. He told a story of asking Abercrombie to paint a particular object of importance to him, which she refused to do, saying “Would I ask you, on one line of paper, to write a symphony?” Dizzy then said that “…finally, she did paint a picture, it’s about two by three, and it has a little flag up in the corner with the letters DG on it.  It is so little and I put it in a big frame, not in the center, but off center.” This is the present painting, Untitled (For Dizzy Gillespie).  

 

Despite its small scale, the composition of the painting is balanced in Abercrombie’s typical deceptively simple manner. The large shell in the foreground is slightly left of center and balanced by the pennant flag, inscribed with DG for Dizzy Gillispie, in the right middle ground. The cloud in the upper left background creates the third angle of the pyramidal composition in addition to echoing the movement of the flag. Although perhaps not intentional, the very center of the shell has what appears to be a tiny eye, something that may refer to Abercrombie’s kind of jazz. The painting is further personalized by the artist, who typically only signed her paintings with her last name. With classic Abercrombiesque wit, she precedes the cursive “Abercrombie” autograph with a fancy, embellished “G,” paying homage to her friendship with Gillespie through their shared initial.