Red Grooms is an artist for whom the term “multi-media” seems to have been coined. Painter, sculptor, printmaker, filmmaker, and theatrical showman, Grooms has brought his unique vision to life in nearly every medium.

Born Charles Rogers Grooms in 1937 in Nashville, Tennessee, Red (nicknamed in 1959 for his hair color) began his extensive career in the arts at an early age with an exhibition of paintings at a Nashville gallery while he was still in high school. He went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at Peabody College in his hometown. In 1956, Grooms relocated to New York City to continue his studies at the New School for Social Research. New York has since been his permanent home, as well as a source of inspiration for many of his works.

In the summer of 1957, Grooms attended a Provincetown summer session with Hans Hofmann, whose work he considers to be “at the top level of that great generation” that includes de Kooning, Kline and Rothko. Grooms featured Hofmann’s likeness in a series of portraits of great modern artists.

Later that decade, Grooms began experimenting with performance, gaining notoriety for his “Happenings:” unstructured live art events that were equal parts vaudeville, Keystone Kop caper and circus act.

While in Provincetown, Grooms met experimental animation pioneer and gallery owner Yvonne Anderson, with whom he collaborated on a several short films including, Spaghetti Trouble (1963) Fat Feet (1966) and Meow Meow (1970) (1959), Many of the characters and scenarios he created in his Happenings reemerged in these films: most notably, his free-spirited, trouble-making anarchist character, “Ruckus.” In his prolific career, Grooms has made over a dozen short films, often with filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. By the 1960s, Grooms was creating the lively, mixed-media self-named “sculpto-pictoramas,” and installations for which he became known. Populated with colorful characters of every ethnicity, age and walk of life, Grooms’ cityscapes capture the vibrant and often chaotic energy of modern metropolitan life. His major installations, The City of Chicago (1967), and Ruckus Manhattan (1975/76) captured the imaginations of thousands of viewers. After Ruckus Manhattan , a turning point in his career, Grooms dedicated himself to New York Stories, a series of prints and sculptural tableaux that were an homage to the city. Although deeply rooted in American culture, Grooms' work conveys a sense of humor and an appreciation of human nature that is universally understood. He has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and Japan and is represented in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum; The Museum of Modern Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Brooklyn Museum; The Denver Art Museum; The Fort Worth Art Museum; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, Venezuela, among others.

He still lives and works in New York.