“We live in a time when surreality is preferable to reality,” a specialist friend posited to me this week, offering one explanation for the surge in demand for surrealist art. As my partner Marion Maneker has chronicled, the market has been led by René Magritte, whose 1954 L’empire des lumières recently traded hands for a record $121 million. But interest in the century-old movement has trickled down to lesser known artists, too. Among the more surprising beneficiaries is the Chicago painter Gertrude Abercrombie, a largely self-taught artist most active in the 1940s and 1950s, called the “jazz witch” for her eccentric style and piano-playing at her weekly salons. Her market has grown steadily over the past few years—a trend that Wright and Toomey & Co. will capitalize on this Thursday, when four Abercrombie works will be auctioned as part of their Elevated: Art Via Chicago sale.