“It is the cruel lesson of history that not every artist's creations, no matter how psychologically authentic or excellently crafted, are socially useful and/or economically viable. What young artists ought to realize is that they are their own best patrons and that they will survive not on the basis of public relations schemes, government bestowals, or public service jobs, but by "making it"—namely art. And other "making it" will flow out of their self-confidence and faith in the art they create. Success may never come—and may not be needed. But if they do not learn how to subsidize their own inner muse, no one else is likely to do it for them.”
—Gerome Kamrowski
Gerome Kamrowski was a vital participant in the Surrealist Movement in the United States and is widely recognized as a key figure in the transition of American art from representation to abstraction.
Born in Warren, Minnesota, Kamrowski began his art studies in 1932 at the St. Paul School of Art (now Minnesota Museum of American Art - MMAA) where he studied with Cameron Booth and Leroy Turner, both former Hans Hofmann students who were also associated with the Abstraction-Création group in Paris. In 1937 Kamrowski moved to Chicago to study under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Archipenko at the New Bauhaus (now Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design). There, he was exposed to the concepts of the role of nature in art and the "geometric basis of natural form". In 1938, Kamrowski received a Guggenheim fellowship to attend Hans Hofmann's summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He then moved to New York, where he met William Baziotes, who supported his early fascination with Surrealism. Together, they shared an interest in Surrealist automatic writing, and both artists explored its potential in their paintings. Kamrowski was especially attracted by Surrealism's fundamental appeal to intuition over intellect. He was interested in the energy generated by the act of painting, seeking a process that "binds all things together...a kind of cosmic rhythm".
In 1942, Surrealist artist Roberto Matta formed a short-lived group of artists to investigate new applications of Surrealist principles, inviting Kamrowski, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Peter Busa, and Robert Motherwell to join. Like Kamrowski, the others were more focused on artistic process rather than subject matter—the foundation of Matta's art. The group became the core impetus of the open-ended movement known as Abstract Surrealism, which further evolved into Abstract Expressionism. Kamrowski described his paintings as “science-fiction space”. His abstracted Surrealist motifs created an inner-worldly presence, conveying the sub-conscious forces of emotion, longing, and transcendence.
Kamrowski was invited to the 1947 Surrealist Exhibition in Paris by Surrealist figurehead André Breton. Breton said of him, "Of all the young painters whose evolution I have been able to follow in New York during the last years of the war, Gerome Kamrowski is the one who has impressed me far the most by reason of the quality and sustained character of his research. Among all the newcomers there, he was the only one...tunnelling in a new direction..."
In 1948, after the death of his wife, Kamrowski moved to Ann Arbor to teach at the University of Michigan School of Art, where he remained for 40 years until his retirement in 1982. For more than half a century, he continued to work in his home studio, creating paintings, sculptures, wind machines, beaded wooden creatures, and art installations for public spaces. A beloved teacher, the University of Michigan Museum of Art featured his work in two major exhibitions, 1983 and 2003.
Gerome Kamrowski's work has been included in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including the San Francisco World's Fair (1939), Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery (1943), The Art Institute of Chicago (1944), Cincinnati Art Museum (1944), San Francisco Museum of Art (1944), The Whitney Museum of American Art (1946, 1947, 1953, 1981, 1988, 1999, 2002), The Detroit Institute of Art (1948, 1949, 1950, 1953, 1954, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1966,), The Brooklyn Museum (1949), Museum of Modern Art (1951), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1958), University of Michigan Museum of Art (1973, 1975, 1983–Retrospective, 1984), Museum of Modern Art (1979, 1991), Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (1984), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995, 2021), National Academy of Design (2005), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2013), Morgan Library and Museum (2013), Tate Modern (2021).
