Page 6 - The Civil War booklet_Neat

E x p l o r e t h e C i v i l Wa r : T h e A r t i s t

Red Grooms has been a fixture at the Hudson River Museum since 1979, b

A Pierpont Morgan Library and Mendoza’s
Book Company in Lower Manhattan.
In 2008 Grooms and painter Tom

cultural icon since Burckhardt collaborated on The Bookstore

the Pop Art move- restoration and re-installation in the

ment of the 1960s, collection galleries.

Grooms has, for The fantastical appearance of much

50 years, brought of Grooms’s work belies his profound sense

life from city and country to sculpture and of the real and his love of history. All his

canvas, with truth that he inflects with sculpto-pictoramas aim to evoke the feeling

both compassion and humor. His paintings of place, and the artist spends countless

and sculpture — full of color, verve, and hours sketching on the spot or researching

theatricality — have immediate impact and what can no longer be seen. In 1968 Grooms

accessibility. From The City of Chicago in included a vignette of Abraham Lincoln

1967 to Ruckus Manhattan in 1975, Grooms debating Stephen Douglas in The City of

perfected increasingly complex environ- Chicago, and a 25-foot Lincoln dominated

ments, which he called sculpto-pictoramas. his outdoor Chicago Billboard. Now his

He designed The Bookstore to function both interest in this great president comes full

as an artwork and the Museum’s gift shop, circle with his latest sculpto-pictorama,

modeling its facades and interiors on the Lincoln On the Hudson.

6 Red Grooms. Chicago Billboard, 1968, Detail