Red Grooms
American, b. 1937
Charles Roger Grooms was born in 1937 in Nashville, Tennessee, a city that, with its lively honky-tonk scene and the theatricality of the historic Grand Ole Opry, would later influence much of his work. Nicknamed for his ginger hair, Red enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1955. A self-proclaimed “restless and undisciplined student,” Grooms spent the next few years moving between schools and cities, including the New School in New York, Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) in Nashville, and Hans Hofmann’s summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Frustrated with the academic track and anxious to enter the New York art scene, Grooms abandoned formal education to focus exclusively on creating art and securing exhibition opportunities in his Chelsea neighborhood. There, he found quick success and a supportive circle of artists that became close friends and collaborators.
From the start of his career, Grooms has worked in multiple media, from painting, printmaking, and sculpture, to installation art, filmmaking, and theatrical experiences known as “Happenings.” Much of his art blurs the boundaries between these different forms, such as his large-scale, carefully-crafted environments he calls “sculpto-pictoramas,” and smaller objects like Dalí Salad. In this example, Grooms combines silkscreened and lithographic elements with a wooden base and acrylic dome to create a three-dimensional portrait of the famous Surrealist artist.
Grooms is perhaps best known for his colorful and comedic commentary on the culture, politics, and figures associated with the American urban environment and art historical traditions. Relying on satire and caricature, Grooms’ art has paid homage to a wide range of artists including Rembrandt, Auguste Rodin, Thomas Eakins, and Benjamin West, as well as national icons like Thomas Jefferson and Chuck Berry. Grooms’ disparate output is so difficult to classify that he has been compared to the influential Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp. Like Duchamp, Grooms often deliberately confronts the art world establishment, noting in 1974 that “it’s good to have . . . something to go against.”
Despite his affinity for defying the mainstream, Grooms is routinely cited by scholars as one of the leading American artists of his generation and was honored with the National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. The subject of a 1984 mid-career retrospective exhibition held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the artist’s work can be found in public collections across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, as well as in many international museums.
- The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina(Biography provided by Helicline Fine Art)
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Huge Red Grooms Monotype Oil Painting LA Hollywood Circus Film Cartoon Pop Art
By Red Grooms
Located in Surfside, FL
Red Grooms (American, b. 1937).
Keystone Kops to the Rescue III. 2006.
Triptych color monotype created by the artist with lithographic ink on plexiglass plates, and then hand-colored by the artist.
Printed by master printer Bud Shark.
Printed on White Rives BFK.
A unique impression, signed by the artist in pencil lower right.
3 sheets. Each sheet is 30 x 44 ½ ”. Overall: 30 x 133 ½ ”
This has all the wonderful components of a Red Grooms piece, Keystone Kops policemen, Circus, Cactus, Cowboys, Hollywood sign etc.
Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7, 1937) is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic Falcone (of Provincetown's Sun Gallery) when he was starting out as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Provincetown and was studying with Hans Hofmann.
Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee during the middle of the Great Depression. Red Grooms came of age in the shadow of the Abstract Expressionists. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at Nashville's Peabody College. In 1956, Grooms moved to New York City, to enroll at the New School for Social Research. A year later, Grooms attended a summer session at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts. There he met experimental animation pioneer Yvonne Andersen, with whom he collaborated on several short films. Grooms follows in the tradition of William Hogarth and Honoré Daumier, who were canny commentators on the human condition. In 1969, Peter Schjeldahl compared Grooms to Marcel Duchamp, because both embodied "a movement of one man that is open to everybody."
In the spring of 1958, Grooms, Yvonne Andersen and Lester Johnson each painted twelve-foot by twelve-foot panels, which they erected with telephone poles on a parking lot adjacent an amusement park in Salisbury, MA. Inspired by artist-run spaces such as New York's Hansa Gallery and Phoenix, and Provincetown's Sun Gallery, Grooms and painter Jay Milder opened the City Gallery in Grooms' second-floor loft in the Flatiron District. When Phoenix refused to show Claes Oldenburg, Grooms and Milder dropped out of Phoenix and City Gallery presented Oldenberg's first New York exhibition, as well as that of Jim Dine. Other artists who showed at City Gallery include Stephen Durkee, Mimi Gross (daughter of Chaim Gross and Red Grooms wife), Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson, and Alex Katz. Grooms never developed the detached stance of such Pop Art practitioners as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein or James Rosenquist. Instead he painted his own life, and became, literally, an actor on the stage of life -- in this case the art-as-life "happenings" of the downtown New York scene. Inspired by George Méliès...
Category
Early 2000s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Monoprint, Monotype
1988 Red Grooms 'van Gogh with Sunflowers' HAND SIGNED
By Red Grooms
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Paper Size: 34 x 22 inches ( 86.36 x 55.88 cm )
Image Size: 25 x 17 inches ( 63.5 x 43.18 cm )
Framed: Yes
Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling
Additional De...
Category
1980s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Lithograph
Study for Way Down East, Color Pencil Drawing by Red Grooms
By Red Grooms
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Red Grooms
Title: Study for Way Down East
Year: circa 1965
Medium: Color Pencil and Watercolor on Paper, Signed verso
Size: 17.5 x 22 inches
Frame: 26 x 32 inches
"Way Down East" is best known as a 1920 American silent romantic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish...
Category
1960s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Color Pencil, Watercolor
Red Grooms Canal St Chinatown Manhattan New York City Lithograph Cartoon Pop Art
By Red Grooms
Located in Surfside, FL
Red Grooms (American, b. 1937).
Lithograph in colors on wove paper, 1993
"East of Canal Street, Corner of Canal."
Published by the Brooklyn Museum
(Reference: Red Grooms: The Grap...
Category
1990s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Lithograph
Original American Pop Art Multi Media "Pancake Eater" Plexiglass Artist's Proof
By Red Grooms
Located in Portland, OR
The Pancake Eater, 1981 by Red Grooms (b. 1937), an Artist's Proof, 2 of 9 (apart from the edition of 31).
Multi-layer lithograph and silkscreen in 31 colors with gold radiance powder.
Cut out collage and vinyl window shade with pull-cord in original acrylic box frame. A wonderful & whimsical piece of Pop Art by one of America's most famous Pop Artists, please see the video attached.
Signed and dated in red pencil, lower right, an Artist's Proof numbered 2 of 9 on a brass plaque affixed to the reverse of the original acrylic box frame.
Co-published by Brooke Alexander, Inc. and Marlborough Gallery, Inc., New York. Condition is excellent.
Born in Nashville Tennesee in 1937 Red Grooms is a; "Sculptor, painter, installation artist, filmmaker, and printmaker. An eager participant in late 1950s happenings, in the 1960s he developed high-spirited, mixed-media environmental sculpture on an enormous scale. In these “sculpto-pictoramas,” as he has called them, multiple, life-size, cartoonish figures inhabit sharply observed localities, usually areas of New York. Related to pop art, his zany work often carries a sarcastic edge but not at the expense of good-natured hilarity. It also plays on nostalgia that stems from the artist's evident affection for his acutely rendered subjects, as befits an admirer of Edward Hopper's paintings. Charles Roger Grooms left Peabody College there to enroll in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for a year. He then decamped for New York to continue his studies at the New School for Social Research (now New School). He also attended Hans Hofmann's summer school in Provincetown. In the late 1950s, along with Allan Kaprow...
Category
1980s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Plexiglass, Paper, Mixed Media, Archival Paper, Color, Etching, Lithograph
H 42.5 in W 30.5 in D 3 in
Elvis
By Red Grooms
Located in Lyons, CO
Color lithograph, Edition 75
Red Grooms and Master printer Bud Shark began their many print collaborations in 1981 with "Mountaintime", followed in 1982 by their first three-dimensional lithograph, "Ruckus...
Category
1990s Contemporary Red Grooms
Materials
Lithograph
Truck I (VEL 105; Knestrick 77)
By Red Grooms
Located in Fairfield, CT
Artist: Red Grooms (1937)
Title: Truck I (VEL 105; Knestrick 77)
Year: 1979-1980
Medium: Lithograph, screenprint, rubber stamp impressions on Arches paper
Edition: 36, plus 11 artist...
Category
1970s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Lithograph, Screen
1976 POP-ART Acrylic Abstract Oil Painting Ruckus Manhattan 3D NYC Project
By Red Grooms
Located in New York, NY
Up for sale, a Red Grooms (B 1937) POP ART Original Acrylic Painting done for Ruckus Manhattan.
Again, the painting is an ABSTRACT ACRYLIC painting on board, Dated 1976
This Origin...
Category
1970s Pop Art Red Grooms
Materials
Oil, Acrylic
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Find a wide variety of authentic Red Grooms art available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of art to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of blue, pink, red and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Red Grooms in lithograph, etching, monotype and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Red Grooms art, so small editions measuring 4 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Ed Ruscha, James Rosenquist, and Jim Dine. Red Grooms art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $200 and tops out at $25,000, while the average work can sell for $2,800.
Questions About Red Grooms
- 1stDibs ExpertJune 6, 2024Here are some interesting facts about Red Grooms: His given name is Charles Rogers Grooms, but he began going by his nickname after a gallery owner started calling him "Red" due to the vibrant color of his ginger hair. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but has lived in New York City for more than 40 years. While still a student, Grooms struggled to find an academic program that was the right fit and switched schools a few times, attending the New School in New York, Peabody College in Nashville and a summer school run by Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He is well known for his large “sculpto-pictogramas,” which combine elements of painting and sculpture. The National Academy of Design presented Grooms with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. On 1stDibs, shop a range of Red Grooms art.
- 1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022Red Grooms, an American painter and sculptor, is best known for his life-size Pop art, which are known as “sculpto-pictoramas.” Ruckus Manhattan is the most famous of these, created by Grooms in 1975 with help from his assistants. It includes a model of the World Trade Center that’s 30 feet tall, a swaying Brooklyn Bridge, and a 15-foot-tall Statue of Liberty. On 1stDibs, shop a selection of Red Grooms artwork from top sellers worldwide.