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Born in Warren, Minnesota, Gerome 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 Matta (Echaurren) formed a short-lived group of artists to investigate
new applications for Surrealist methods. He invited Kamrowski, William
Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Peter Busa, and Robert Motherwell to join.
Like Kamrowski, the others were more interested in process than in subject
matter—the foundation of Matta's art.This group was the kernel of
the open-ended movement known as Abstract Surrealism, which further evolved
into Abstract Expressionism. Kamrowski described his own paintings as
“science-fiction space”. His abstracted Surrealist motifs
served to create an inner-worldly presence conveying the sub-conscious
forces of emotion, longing, and transcendence.
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Kamrowski was invited
to the 1947 Surrealist Exhibition in Paris by Surrealist leader 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 retirment 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 in 2003.
Gerome Kamrowski was
one of the few American artists to be included in Peggy Guggenheim's the
Art of This Century Gallery in 1943. He also had shows at Museum of Modern
Art, 1951, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and at
Whitney Museum of Modern Art, on several occasions.
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