Gerome Kamrowski was an American artist and participant in the Surrealist Movement in the United States. He was born in Warren, Minnesota and began to study art 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.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s he lived in New York and had been working with surrealist automatism for several years. Kamrowski became an integral part of the emerging surrealists and collaborated with William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and Roberto Matta. This group was the kernel of the open-ended movement that was referred to as abstract surrealism and would over time prove to be the beginnings of abstract expressionism.

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 on several occasions. His work can be seen in the Joe Louis Arena station of the Detroit People Mover. 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 said of him, "Gerome Kamrowski is the one who has impressed me the most by reason of the quality and sustained character of his research."

Untitled (Surrealist Composition with Figures) - c.1945, Watercolor with Pen and Ink.

Unsigned.

Image size 10 1/2 x 8 3/16 inches (267 x 208 mm), the image extending to the sheet edges.

A fine surrealist work, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper. A restored loss in the top left sheet corner; a short repaired tear in the top right sheet edge, otherwise in excellent condition.

Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Gallerie Camille, Keith Sheridan Inc.
With a certificate of authenticity signed by artist’s widow.

$15,000.

Untitled (Surrealist Abstraction I) - 1946, Drypoint.

Edition 20, editioned in 1996. Signed, dated, and numbered 8/20 in pencil.

Image size 5 x 5 7/8 inches (127 x 149 mm); sheet size 10 x 10 7/8 inches ( 254 x 276 mm).

A fine impression, on cream laid paper, with full margins (2 to 3 1/8 inches), in excellent condition.

Illustrated in The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract Expressionist Print by David Acton, Hudson Hills Press, NY, 1902. Exhibited: Worchester Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Aman Carter Museum, Mary Anne Lee Block Museum of Art.

SOLD

Untitled (Surrealist Abstraction II) - 1946, Drypoint.

Edition 28, editioned in 1996. Signed, dated, and numbered 7/28 in pencil.

Image size 5 x 5 15/16 inches (127 x 151 mm); sheet size 10 x 10 7/8 inches ( 254 x 276 mm).

A fine impression, on cream laid paper, with full margins (2 to 3 1/8 inches), in excellent condition.

$1400.