5.13.2013

GEROME KAMROWSKI: AMERICA'S LEGENDARY ABSTRACT SURREALIST PAINTER

Gerome Kamrowski 1914-2004

Gerome Kamrowski was the legendary American surrealist artist/painter who taught art at the University of Michigan.  Gerry's work has been exhibited at New York's Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and many more.


He had work displayed at various Detroit People Mover stations, at the Joe Louis Arena, Ann Arbor's City Hall, University of Michigan’s North Campus and at University of Michigan Hospital. He died at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from complications of heart disease at the age of 90 years.


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 in New York 1951, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art at several occasions.


He showed his work in the 1947 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris. He 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."



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. Very few of his students over the next fifty years realized that their teacher was one of the most important artists in America. Gerome Kamrowski worked every single day at his art.

He created massive domes of oil on canvas and brought strange, beaded animals to life. His work balances fluid automatism with powerful abstract imagery. The many layers of paint created a visual maze that clearly communicates an intuitive language with the viewer.


Whimsical and energetic, mysterious and sublime, the work of Ann Arbor artist Gerome Kamrowski has been characterized in many different ways. Constantly challenging himself as well as his viewers, Kamrowski had been engaged in a lifelong search for new and exciting ways to represent the themes that interested him.

This has made it challenging to categorize or classify his work in art historical terms, but it has helped ensure its freshness and vitality.

Gerome Kamrowski was a pioneer painter. He chose a career of teaching and learning as a way to propagate his artwork. Other painters such as Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow Ford and Joan Miró shared a common vision with him.
 
The devotion to that vision has changed the way art is viewed. It also allows us the privilege to look over an entire lifetime worth of work. It is with great honor and respect that Weinstein Gallery presents the life work of Gerome Kamrowski.

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