Red Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1937 and has lived in New York for the past 60 years. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The New School in New York City, and at Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The artist’s work has been exhibited widely since the 1960s. Since Ruckus Manhattan, his widely acclaimed exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in 1976, Grooms has staked his claim as one of America’s most original, inventive, and popular artists. He has been honored with several important exhibitions including the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tennessee in 2016; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut and Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, Vermont in 2013; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York in 2008; the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York in 2003; National Academy of Design, New York, New York in 2001; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York in 1987; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1985. Grooms has received numerous awards and commissions throughout his career, including the he National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

Grooms’s work can be found in over forty public institutions, including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York.