Artist

Nancy Grossman

born New York City 1940
Media - portrait_image_113403.jpg - 90241
Photograph by Sylvia Plachy. Courtesy Nancy Grossman.
Born
New York, New York, United States
Biography

Grossman completed a fine arts degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and subsequently received a Guggenheim fellowship for travel abroad. Although initially influenced by Richard Lindner and David Smith, Grossman's paintings, collages, and sculpture come out of a distinctly individual understanding of the psychological reality of contemporary life. Concerned with people as victims, Grossman depicted headless human forms tightly bound with shackles in a series of drawings, and in collages created figures whose contorted postures and featureless faces convey an unidentifiable sense of panic. In the late 1960s Grossman began her well-known series of carved wooden heads. Covered with leather, they often have closed zippers for mouths and are adorned with horns, buttons, or metal studs. In these sculptures Grossman symbolizes repression and the bestial side of human nature.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)

Works by this artist (4 items)

Howard Newman, Temptress, 1978, bronze, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1985.30.54
Temptress
Date1978
bronze
On view
Howard Newman, Half Woman, Quarter Bird, 1974-1975, bronze/cast, assembled and screwed, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.68, © 1975, Howard Newman
Half Woman, Quarter Bird
Date1974-1975
bronze/cast, assembled and screwed
Not on view
Howard Newman, Untitled, 1979, graphite and brown watercolor wash on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1985.30.53
Untitled
Date1979
graphite and brown watercolor wash on paper
Not on view
Howard Newman, Winter, 1978, bronze on integral base, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1985.30.55
Winter
Date1978
bronze on integral base
Not on view

Exhibitions

Media - 1986.6.92 - SAAM-1986.6.92_3 - 135150
Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection
February 28, 2014August 16, 2014
Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection presents some of the most treasured artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection, including works by Will Barnet, Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, Arthur Dove, Na

Related Posts

Detailed crop of Twisted Column Figure
Twisting Column Figure represents the freedom that comes once we commit to unlearning and undoing restrictions, from society and from ourselves.
Nathaniel Phillips