Red Grooms

In 1937, Red Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Peabody College (Nashville), the New School for Social Research (New York), and with Hans Hofmann at his Provincetown, Massachusetts studio. He also collaborated with Claes Oldenburg. Grooms won a CAPS grant for filmmaking in 1970, which recognized his unusual ability to see beyond the surface to his artwork. He worked with the filmmaker Rudolph Burckhardt on a number of occasions. In 1961 he produced his first film.
He his best known for his life-sized environments of stores, subways, and city scenes. He inhabits these environments with offbeat, spirited, easily identifiable characters who strike a humorous chord in their viewers. Grooms’ work has been exhibited internationally. He is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh), and the Chrysler Museum (Provincetown, MA).