Red Grooms
American, 1937-

Bicentennial Bandwagon, From the portfolio, Spirit of Independence, Kent Bicentennial, 1975
serigraph
26 5/8 x 34 3/4 in.

SBMA, Gift of Lorillard Company
1976.7.6



Red Grooms Self Portrait, 1982 color lithograph

"Grooms is a sculptor, painter and printmaker. He is best known for his large scale, intensely colored pieces of frenetic scenes of modern urban life. No artist since Honoré Daumier has had a greater understanding of humor or a more direct connection to his audience. In return, Grooms has earned the public’s unqualified admiration and appreciation." - artline.com

COMMENTS

Red Grooms is an artist for whom the term “multi-media” seems to have been coined. Painter, sculptor, printmaker, filmmaker, and theatrical showman, Grooms has brought his unique vision to life in nearly every medium.

Born Charles Rogers Grooms in 1937 in Nashville, Tennessee, Red (nicknamed in 1959 for his hair color) began his extensive career in the arts at an early age with an exhibition of paintings at a Nashville gallery while he was still in high school. He went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at Peabody College in his hometown. In 1956, Grooms relocated to New York City to continue his studies at the New School for Social Research. New York has since been his permanent home, as well as a source of inspiration for many of his works.

In the summer of 1957, Grooms attended a Provincetown summer session with Hans Ho fmann, whose work he considers to be “at the top level of that great generation” that includes de Kooning, Kline and Rothko. Grooms featured Hofmann’s likeness in a series of portraits of great modern artists.

Later that decade, Grooms began experimenting with performance, gaining notoriety for his “Happenings:” unstructured live art events that were equal parts vaudeville, Keystone Kop caper and circus act.

While in Provincetown, Grooms met experimental animation pioneer and gallery owner Yvonne Anderson, with whom he collaborated on a several short films including, Spaghetti Trouble (1963) Fat Feet (1966) and Meow Meow (1970) (1959), Many of the characters and scenarios he created in his Happenings reemerged in these films: most notably, his free-spirited, trouble-making anarchist character, “Ruckus.” In his prolific career, Grooms has made over a dozen short films, often with filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt.

By the 1960s, Grooms was creating the lively, mixed-media self-named “sculpto-pictoramas,” and installations for which he became known. Populated with colorful characters of every ethnicity, age and walk of life, Grooms’ cityscapes capture the vibrant and often chaotic energy of modern metropolitan life. His major installations, The City of Chicago (1967), and Ruckus Manhattan (1975/76) captured the imaginations of thousands of viewers. After Ruckus Manhattan , a turning point in his career, Grooms dedicated himself to New York Stories, a series of prints and sculptural tableaux that were an homage to the city. Although deeply rooted in American culture, Grooms' work conveys a sense of humor and an appreciation of human nature that is universally understood. He has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and Japan and is represented in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum; The Museum of Modern Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Brooklyn Museum; The Denver Art Museum; The Fort Worth Art Museum; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, Venezuela, among others.

He still lives and works in New York (2017).

www.pbs.org/hanshofmann/red_grooms


The "KENT BICENTENNIAL PORTFOLIO SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE" of signed and numbered lithographs and serigraphs was commissioned for America’s Bicentennial celebration by Lorilland Company, makers of Kent cigarettes, to express and to share the unique spirit known as American Independence.

The portfolio contains 12 original works of art, which are now in the permanent collections of 108 museums across the United States, gifts of the Lorillard Tobacco Company.

SET OF 12:

MARISOL(ESCOBAR)/WOMEN'S EQUALITY
RED GROOMS/BICENTENNIAL BANDWAGON
ROBERT INDIANA/ LIBERTY '76
COLLEEN BROWNING/ UNION MIXER
LARRY RIVERS/ AN OUTLINE OF HISTORY
JACOB LAWRENCE/ 1920'S THE MIGRANTS CAST THEIR BALLOTS
WILL BARNET/ WAITING
AUDREY FLACK/ FOURTH OF JULY STILL LIFE
EDWARD RUSCHA/ AERICA HER BEST PRODUCT.
FRITZ SCHOLDER/ BICENTENNIAL INDIAN.
JOSEPH HIRSCH/ THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
ALEX KATZ/ WASHINGTON