NYC ART - RED GROOMS

Red Grooms with his painting "Joseph's Bridge" named in honour of Joseph Stella's paintings of Brooklyn Bridge

Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7th., 1937) is an American multimedia artist best known for his colourful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at Nashville's Peabody College, in 1956, Grooms moved to New York City, to enrol at the New School for Social Research.

'Subway' an excerpt from 'Ruckus Manhattan' 1975

In the early 1960's Grooms invented "sculpto-pictoramas" (such as his work, Ruckus Manhattan) - the mixed-media installations that would become his signature craft. These vibrant three-dimensional constructions melded painting and sculpture, to create immersive works of art that invited interaction from the viewer. The pieces were often populated with colourful, cartoon-like characters, from varied walks of life.

The Nervous City Street Scene 1973

Grooms' work has been exhibited extensively in galleries across the United States, as well as Europe, ans Japan and his art hangs in the collections of thirty-nine galleries, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2003, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Design.

Red Grooms currently lives and works in a studio on Walker Street, in Lower Manhattan at the intersection of Tribeca and Chinatown.