Gerome Kamrowski American, 1914-2004

Born in Warren, Minnesota in 1914. As a member of the WPA/FAP he traveled extensively throughout the United States during the 1930s. In 1937 studied at The New Bauhaus in Chicago with László Moholy-Nagy and with Hans Hoffman at his school in Provincetown, Mass. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship by Hilla Rebay in the early 1940s which brought him to New York City and into contact with the exiled Surrealists. Worked closely with William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Roberto Matta. One of the original members of an open-ended movement referred to as Abstract Surrealism, a group that would prove to be a critical step in the birth of Abstract Expressionism.

Kamrowski was deeply respected by André Breton, who proclaimed: "Gerome Kamrowski is the one who has impressed me far the most by reason of the quality and sustained character of his research." Left New York in 1948 and became a teacher at the University of Michigan School of Art at Ann Arbor. Never abandoning his prolific art career, he taught at the University of Michigan until his retirement 1982. Kamrowski died in 2004.