Red Grooms (b.1937) "Rat", Lithograph from the No Gas Portfolio, edition 18/75. Pencil signed and numbered by the artist. Professionally framed and double matted. In frame measures 33"x39"x1". Weight 16 pds. PROVENANCE: A Philadelphia PA/Charleston SC Private Collection. NO IN HOUSE SHIPPING ON THIS ITEM. ***Pickup only or Shipping on this item offered through Pak Mail 843-849-0310 - info@charlestonshipping.com , Quik Mail Etc 843-723-6598 quikmailetc@gmail.com, Outward Bound 413-854-3676, or locally AJ Williams & Sons 843-442-0462. Please contact one of them or your own choice of shipper directly. **** Charles Roger Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee during the middle of the Great Depression. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1955, 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.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.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.

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