| | Biography:
Red Grooms was born Charles Rogers Grooms in Nashville, Tennessee in 1937. He studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago, the New School of Social Research, New York and Hans Hoffmann's school in Provincetown. In 1957 Grooms moved to New York City and opened the first alternative exhibition space, City Gallery, with artist Jay Milder. Labeled a beatnik artist who was part of a "Junk Art" movement, Grooms then opened the Delancy Street Museum a year later. In Provincetown during the summers he exhibited at the Sun Gallery, an innovative space that consistently featured young figurative expressionists, including Mary Frank, Jan Muller and Bob Thompson. It was here that he also staged his first of many happenings, "Play Called Fire". Grooms was a guest exhibitor in one of the
Rhino Horn
group shows. He continued in his paintings, "stick outs" and collages to document the figure in urban America with humor and irony, rejecting the sterile and detached look of the pop phenomenon. Over the last four decades Grooms has had numerous outstanding individual exhibitions, including "Rucus Manhattan" in 1976 and a traveling retrospective organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. He is recognized today as a pioneer of site specific sculpture and installation art.
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