Gerome Kamrowski

Gerome Kamrowski, American, 1914-2004. A 1990s mixed media media mobile sculpture. Two-tier multi-color painted wooden body with applied beads. Signed "Kamrowski", and dated "1992" at underside of top section and on arm of lower section. Original condition.

Biography:

Born in Warren, Minnesota in 1914, Kamrowski was an American artist and an early participant in the Surrealist Movement in the United States. He began his formal artistic education in the early 1930s at the St. Paul School of Art (now Minnesota Museum of American Art - MMAA), and later at the New Bauhaus in Chicago (now Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design). He then moved to New York to study with Hans Hofmann, where he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

While living in New York in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Kamrowski embraced the Surrealist approach to automatism. He worked with techniques that muted preconceived ideas in order to create without residual moral or aesthetic considerations, resulting in imagery often consisting of energetic figures or ecosystems within the pictorial web of space. He became an integral part of the emerging Surrealists, a group united in their mutual interest in the artistic process over the subject matter. From 1939-1940, Gerome Kamrowski, William Baziotes and Jackson Pollock collaborated on a single painting that is now seen as the definitive transition from, and fusion of, Surrealism to Action Painting and Abstract Expressionism.

Gerome Kamrowski was one of the few American artists to be included in Peggy Guggenheim's Gallery, The Art of This Century in 1943. He exhibited his work in the 1947 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris, and was invited to the Paris exhibition by Surrealist leader André Breton. Breton would say of him, "Gerome Kamrowski is the one who has impressed me the most by reason of the quality and sustained character of his research." He also exhibited at Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1951, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art on several occasions.

In 1948 he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to teach at the University of Michigan School of Art. He stayed at the University of Michigan until his retirement 1982. Always remaining an active artist, his style continued to evolve dynamically from the abstract intellectual exercises of the past to colorful 3-D pieces often made of glass, cement, and random found objects.

Solo Exhibitions (Partial List):

1946 Mortimer Brandt Gallery, NY

1948 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, NY

1950, 1957 Galerie R Creuze, Paris France

1950 Hugo Gallery, New York, NY

1954 Saginaw Art Museum, Saginaw, MI

1956 Battle Creek Civic Art Center, Battle Creek, MI

1961 Gallery Mayer, New York, NY

1961 University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI

1962 Riverside Museum, New York, NY

1964 Ohio University, Athens, OH

1966 The Scarab Club, Detroit, MI

1968 Flint Institute of Art, Flint, MI

1976 Gallery 2269, Chicago, IL

1961 Gallery Mayer, New York, NY

1961 University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI

1962 Riverside Museum, New York, NY

1964 Ohio University, Athens, OH

1966 The Scarab Club, Detroit, MI

1976 Gallery 2269, Chicago, IL

1978 Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, NY

1980 Dreyfuss Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI

1985 C Corcoran Gallery, Muskegon, MI

1986 G.R. Namdi Gallery, Detroit, MI

1987 Washburn Gallery, New York, NY

1988 Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, MI

1989 Holland Area Arts Council, Holland, MI

1990 Detroit Focus Gallery, Detroit, MI

1990 Alice Simsar Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI

1993 Mott Community College, Flint MI

1995 Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, MI

1997 Jean Slusser Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI

1999 The River Gallery, Chelsea, MI

2002 Leepa-Rattner Museum, Tarpon Springs, FL

2005 Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2020 Michigan Art Gallery, Ypsilanti, MI

2024 Lincoln Glenn Gallery, New York, NY

Collections:

Albion College, Albion, MI

Ann Arbor District Library, Ann Arbor, MI

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI

Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI

Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles, CA

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

The Ross Art Collection, Ann Arbor, MI

The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI

The University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM

Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC

Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Worcester Art Museum, Worchester, MA

Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ