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A large, overweight woman with her hair in a bun sits in an overstuffed pink chair decorated with floral designs. She stares at the viewer, and emphatically places her hands on the arms of the chair. She wears a blue top and black skirt with yellow trim, and her white-stockinged feet are encased in sandals. Grooms’s rendition is sufficiently faithful to the original, and serves as a tribute to it. But Grooms has also modified it by elongating the face, by making it and the eyes more symmetrical than its lopsided model, and by replacing the severe brown of the clothing with quasi-feminine patterns that resemble wallpaper. Despite its modest size of less than two feet, the figure is imposing in its robustness, a quality in direct contrast to the delicate fabrication of the piece from a sheet of paper held together by tabs and glue.
Two years before the creation of Gertrude, Grooms had been introduced to the glue gun, an invaluable tool for an artist known for his eclectic use of diverse materials. But his interest in constructing things from paper reverts back to his childhood. “I used to make model airplanes out of paper. I got them in a kit which contained a simple page, a flat sheet with tabs, and you cut them out and glued them together. Actually old toys were made exactly like these three-dimensional prints. They were printed on tin sheets and then cut and assembled.” [1] Leave it to Grooms to transfer an established commercial process to art making.
Gertrude was Grooms’s first fully three-dimensional print and, after much trial and error, it was printed at the Circle Workshop by Mauro Giuffrida in an edition of forty-six. Printed on a flat sheet, it had sections to be cut out, and tabs to be inserted. Once assembled, it is meant for display like a relief, hanging on the wall in its own Plexiglas box. [2]
The subject of Gertrude is none other than Gertrude Stein, who had abandoned the prospects of a career in medicine in order to live as an expatriate poet and collector in Paris. Together with her brother, Leo, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, Stein held weekly salons where she welcomed the up-and-coming artists of the day, many of whom were represented in her collection. In addition to Picasso, she hosted Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, as well as many Americans including Alfred Maurer, Joseph Stella, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In 1906, Picasso labored—there were eighty sittings—over the portrait of his most important patron. It was a pivotal period for the artist who was beginning to explore African tribal art; the following year he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, hailed by many as launching Cubism. In his portrait of Stein, the influence of African art is evident in her mask-like face, which Grooms has softened, creating a slightly farcical image of a fat older woman. Nevertheless, the innovative lithograph remains a telling tribute to Stein and Picasso.
Notes:
[1] Grooms quoted in Vincent Katz, Red Grooms: The Graphic Work (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001), 32.
[2] Katz, Red Grooms, 81 and 279.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]
From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
2006
Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (8/30/2006-12/31/2006)
2010
Looking At/Looking In: Bodies and Faces in Contemporary Prints
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (5/11/2010-8/8/2010)
2016-2018
Off the Wall: Postmodern Art at Reynolda
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/2016-6/11/2018)
Published ReferencesAlexander, Brooke and Cowles, Virginia. Red Grooms: A Catalogue Raisonne Of His Graphic Work, 1957-1981. Nashville: The Fine Arts Center, Cheekwood, 1981: 13 (illustration).
Derfner, Phyllis. "Red Grooms," Art International. v. 19 (May 1975): 68.
Grooms, Red. Red Grooms, A Retrospective, 1956-1984. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985: 93 (illustration).
"Red Grooms," Arts Magazine v. 49 n. 1 (June 1975): 11.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 78, 196, 197
DepartmentAmerican Art
Gertrude
Artist
Red Grooms
(born 1937)
Date1975
Mediumthree-dimensional lithograph in seven colors on Arches Cover paper with collage, cut out, glued, and mounted in Plexiglas case
DimensionsImage: 17 1/8 x 19 9/16 x 9 1/4 in. (43.5 x 49.7 x 23.5 cm)
Frame (Plexiglas case): 19 5/16 x 22 x 11 3/8 in. (49.1 x 55.9 x 28.9 cm)
SignedRed Grooms
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© Red Grooms / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number1983.2.27
DescriptionGertrude, Red Grooms’s parody of Pablo Picasso’s infamous portrait of his patron Gertrude Stein, is typical of his sardonic wit and innovative use of techniques. In keeping with his entire oeuvre, Grooms is both lighthearted and reverential in his satire of two well-known giants of early Modernism. The three-dimensional lithograph demonstrates Grooms’s debt to Picasso, another great innovator of the twentieth century credited with the invention of collage. A large, overweight woman with her hair in a bun sits in an overstuffed pink chair decorated with floral designs. She stares at the viewer, and emphatically places her hands on the arms of the chair. She wears a blue top and black skirt with yellow trim, and her white-stockinged feet are encased in sandals. Grooms’s rendition is sufficiently faithful to the original, and serves as a tribute to it. But Grooms has also modified it by elongating the face, by making it and the eyes more symmetrical than its lopsided model, and by replacing the severe brown of the clothing with quasi-feminine patterns that resemble wallpaper. Despite its modest size of less than two feet, the figure is imposing in its robustness, a quality in direct contrast to the delicate fabrication of the piece from a sheet of paper held together by tabs and glue.
Two years before the creation of Gertrude, Grooms had been introduced to the glue gun, an invaluable tool for an artist known for his eclectic use of diverse materials. But his interest in constructing things from paper reverts back to his childhood. “I used to make model airplanes out of paper. I got them in a kit which contained a simple page, a flat sheet with tabs, and you cut them out and glued them together. Actually old toys were made exactly like these three-dimensional prints. They were printed on tin sheets and then cut and assembled.” [1] Leave it to Grooms to transfer an established commercial process to art making.
Gertrude was Grooms’s first fully three-dimensional print and, after much trial and error, it was printed at the Circle Workshop by Mauro Giuffrida in an edition of forty-six. Printed on a flat sheet, it had sections to be cut out, and tabs to be inserted. Once assembled, it is meant for display like a relief, hanging on the wall in its own Plexiglas box. [2]
The subject of Gertrude is none other than Gertrude Stein, who had abandoned the prospects of a career in medicine in order to live as an expatriate poet and collector in Paris. Together with her brother, Leo, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, Stein held weekly salons where she welcomed the up-and-coming artists of the day, many of whom were represented in her collection. In addition to Picasso, she hosted Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, as well as many Americans including Alfred Maurer, Joseph Stella, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In 1906, Picasso labored—there were eighty sittings—over the portrait of his most important patron. It was a pivotal period for the artist who was beginning to explore African tribal art; the following year he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, hailed by many as launching Cubism. In his portrait of Stein, the influence of African art is evident in her mask-like face, which Grooms has softened, creating a slightly farcical image of a fat older woman. Nevertheless, the innovative lithograph remains a telling tribute to Stein and Picasso.
Notes:
[1] Grooms quoted in Vincent Katz, Red Grooms: The Graphic Work (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001), 32.
[2] Katz, Red Grooms, 81 and 279.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]
From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
2006
Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (8/30/2006-12/31/2006)
2010
Looking At/Looking In: Bodies and Faces in Contemporary Prints
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (5/11/2010-8/8/2010)
2016-2018
Off the Wall: Postmodern Art at Reynolda
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/2016-6/11/2018)
Published ReferencesAlexander, Brooke and Cowles, Virginia. Red Grooms: A Catalogue Raisonne Of His Graphic Work, 1957-1981. Nashville: The Fine Arts Center, Cheekwood, 1981: 13 (illustration).
Derfner, Phyllis. "Red Grooms," Art International. v. 19 (May 1975): 68.
Grooms, Red. Red Grooms, A Retrospective, 1956-1984. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985: 93 (illustration).
"Red Grooms," Arts Magazine v. 49 n. 1 (June 1975): 11.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 78, 196, 197
Status
Not on view