Gertrude Abercrombie’s Band of Midwest Magic Realists
A pair of exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum underscores the support, comradeship, and spirit of rebellion shared by the Surrealist and her friends.
MILWAUKEE — In the 1940s, a small band of Midwest artists dubbed the “Magic Realists” began making work that tapped into the freedoms of Surrealism without being swayed by stylistic tendencies. They took their own path, achieving recognition during their heyday, but drew scant attention from the larger art world in later years. In the last decade, two exhibitions have generated renewed interest: a 2018 show of one of the six primary members, Gertrude Abercrombie, at Karma Gallery in New York, and a recent retrospective of the artist that traveled from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh to the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, and is currently on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum. At least, they generated renewed interest in Abercrombie. Auction prices for the late Chicago-based artist’s small-scale paintings have skyrocketed. In November 2025, the painting “Message for Mercy” (1950) sold for over $1 million at Sotheby’s, surpassing her previous auction record of $864,000.
The touring exhibition focuses solely on Abercrombie, presenting about 80 paintings. The Milwaukee iteration, however, has commendably added a small parallel exhibition, Gertrude and Friends: The Wisconsin Magic Realists, for which curator of American Art Thomas Busciglio-Ritter assembled work from the museum’s permanent collection by the artists closest to Abercrombie: John Wilde, Karl Priebe, Dudley Huppler, and Marshall Glasier, though Sylvia Fein is notably absent. The exhibition underscores the mutual support, comradeship, and spirit of rebellion shared by this cohort and other less-involved colleagues, presenting Abercrombie not as an isolated maker, but as part of a protective and inspirational community.
