: From June 4 through September 6, the Frist Center for the Visual
Arts will present the largest collection of Red Grooms' prints
ever assembled for an exhibition. "Red Grooms: Selections from
the Graphic Work" includes more than 120 works, both two- and
three-dimensional, covering 40 years of printmaking by the
renowned artist and Nashville native.
Created between 1956 and 1999, the works reveal the practiced
hand of a master draftsman who has experimented with an array of
printmaking techniques ranging from delicate soft ground etchings
to an 8-foot high woodblock print, to 3-D graphic versions of
"Sculpto-pictoramas," the large-scale environmental works for
which Grooms is best known.
This exhibition focuses on themes that have been central to
Grooms' work since the late 1950s. Galleries focus variously on
images of the city and its denizens, icons of popular culture
such as Elvis Presley, portraits and self-portraits and heroes of
the art world.
Grooms introduced the theme of the city in 1962 with his first
commissioned print, "Self-Portrait in a Crowd." The image of a
jaunty, striding figure wearing a stovepipe hat on a busy street
signals the artist's confidence in his quickly rising career. In
1967, Grooms created his first life-sized installation, inspired
by nostalgia for the "Windy City" of Chicago, where he had
studied art in the late 1950s. Four years later in 1971, Grooms
portrayed the densely swarming streets of New York City in his
first print portfolio, "No Gas." In later works, Grooms continued
to portray New York with exaggerated street perspectives,
outlandish people and a high degree of nervous energy.
Portraits and figures comprise another theme in the exhibition.
Like a number of other young artists active in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, Grooms began turning to ordinary subjects, such as
his friends and family members, and depicting them in a
simplified representational manner. He forged his own style of
figurative expressionism, often including his own image as an
actor on the stage of life. This gallery features a self-portrait
of the artist making a print and an image of the collector, his
friend Walter Knestrick.
Beginning with the tiny linocut "Five Futurists," 1958, Grooms
celebrates his own existence as an artist by paying homage to
many of the important figures in the history of Western art. His
fascination with the prolific Spanish painter Pablo Picasso is
reflected by four prints. Although he respects such artistic
"heroes," Grooms is not afraid to have a little fun at their
expense, as seen in "Nineteenth Century Artists," 1976, a series
in which he spoofs the fathers of modern art from Realist Gustave
Courbet to Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne. Elsewhere, Grooms
simulates the styles and subjects associated with earlier
artists, such as Paul Gauguin's roughly carved woodcuts of the
South Seas, Edward Hopper's light-filled New England beach scenes
and the tall, thin figures of Alberto Giacometti.
"Red Grooms: Selections from The Graphic Work" is organized by
the Tennessee State Museum and curated by Susan Knowles from the
collection of Walter G. Knestrick. Locally, the exhibition is
sponsored by First Tennessee. The exhibition catalog, Red
Grooms: The Graphic Work by Walter Knestrick will be
available for purchase in the Frist Center Gift Shop.
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is at 919 Broadway. For
information, 615-244-3440 or www.fristcenter.og.
