Red Grooms: New York State of Mind

“I equate crowds with civilization. I grew up in Nashville. I wished desperately that it had a bigger skyline and that the streets had more people on them. In Nashville you could always feel the country. What I felt was the desolate country inside the city walls… I wanted a city with big, sophisticated civilization. Enough crowds would prove that you were in a civilization. That’s why New York is my home.”

Marlborough Graphics New York is pleased to present an online exhibition celebrating the graphics works by Red Grooms. Presented in this exhibition will be a grouping of ten prints, a majority of which were published by Marlborough Graphics. These works convey the details of New York as only a native would know them, as well as an awestruck notion for its size and charm which are easily appreciated through the eyes of a visitor or tourist.

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. When he arrived in New York City in 1957 from Nashville at the age of twenty, Grooms remembers looking at small paperback Harry Abrams art books and subscribing to ARTnews— that’s how he had known to get on a Greyhound bus to NYC to pursue a career in art.

For or over six decades, Red Grooms has embraced all things New York and served as a major chronicler of its famously frenetic lifestyle. Always vibrant, inventive, and witty, Red has reinforced the pride that New Yorkers have for their city. As somewhat of an outsider—originally from Nashville, with early sojourns to Provincetown and Chicago—Grooms has been able to clearly witness what makes the city so unique. His portrayals of the city—through close-up chronicles of characters and day-to-day moments in city life—also pan out to a bird’s eye view, depicting the rapidly changing landscape of Manhattan’s skyline from afar. No matter the perspective, each scene builds a particular dialogue between the city, old and new; a generation’s cycle of destruction and creation documented throughout his life, since his arrival.

Grooms 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 National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

His 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, DC..; 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

Please note prints are available to view in person by appointment only.