Nancy Grossman

Early life and education

Nancy Grossman was born in 1940 in New York City to parents who worked in the garment industry. She moved at the age of five to Oneonta, New York. There, she began helping her parents at work making darts, which are three-dimensional folds sewn into fabric to give shape; and gussets, which are materials sewn into fabric to strengthen a garment. Her experience in sewing influenced her work as an artist. Grossman studied at Pratt Institute and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree under the tutelage of Richard Lindner, in 1962. She then traveled Europe after earning Pratt's Ida C. Haskell Award for Foreign Travel.

When she began making art her work was largely collage and drawings. She was working in the 1960s, when Abstract Expression was popular, and she was torn between abstract art and her love for material exploration. At 23, Grossman had her first solo exhibition at the Kasner gallery in New York City. Her artwork included collages, constructions, drawings, and paintings. In 1964 she moved to Elderidge Street in Chinatown and continued to work there. Her move afforded her more space, so she began assembling free standing pieces and wall assemblages of at least six feet by four feet.

Art

Grossman is probably most well known for her work with figures sculpted from soft wood and then covered in leather. Grossman first used wood, generally soft and "found," such as old telephone poles, and carefully sculpts heads and bodies. The heads she sculpted early in her career were "blind" as the eyes were covered by leather; however, openings were always left for the noses. Grossman explains that she wanted to release some of the tension and let the figure breathe. Her attention to detail is seen in her workmanship, with each stitch of leather sewn carefully. The sculpture Male Figure (1971), is one of her full-bodied forms. Grossman uses leather, straps, zippers, and string to create sculptures that appear bound and restrained. She describes her work as autobiographical, and despite figures like Male Figure, which has male genitalia, she says her sculptures are self-portraits.

Others have reviewed her work as seemingly sexual and reminiscent of sadism and masochism, which Grossman denies. She says her work challenges the ideas of gender identity and gender fluidity. Grossman says the sculptures refer to her "bondage in childhood," but others have said that her work may flirt with the potential of female artists who had not yet gained prominence in the 1960s. Grossman plays with images of violence and sex as a way to explore her childhood abuse. Grossman describes her work as a form of surrender, allowing things to flow from her and trusting that it will work out. Head from 1968, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, is typical of the wood and leather sculptures of heads for which the artist is best known.

Recent work

Some of her later work, such as Black Lava Scape from her series Combustion Scapes (1994–95) are mixed media collages created from found objects. Another piece in the series Self-Contained Lavascape (1991) is a mixed media collage drawing. According to a review in the New York Times, these pieces were inspired by a helicopter flight over an active volcano in Hawaii.

In 1995, Grossman sustained an injury to her hand which made working with sculpture very difficult. After an operation to rebuild part of her hand, she was left with limited mobility, which is what led her to go back to her work with collage and painting.

Recently, her work has been shown in major museum exhibitions. In the summer of 2011, PS1-MoMA presented a solo exhibition of her sculptural heads, and in 2012, the Tang Museum at Skidmore College presented Nancy Grossman: Tough Life, a five-decade survey. Throughout her impressive career, Grossman has received a steady flow of accolades, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1984), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (1991), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (1996–97), and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2001), and her work is represented in the permanent collections of museums worldwide.

Censorship

In 2009, the U.S. Postal Service censored her postcard, for her etchings of a book by Adrienne Rich.

Exhibitions

Awards

1962 Ida C. Haskell Award for Foreign Travel, Pratt Institute

1965-66 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

1966 Inaugural Contemporary Achievement Award, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

1970 One Hundred Women In Touch With Our Time, Harper’s Bazaar Magazine

1973 Juror, New York State Council on the Arts, sculpture applicants for CAPS Fellowships

1974 Commencement Speaker and Honored Guest, 99th Commencement Exercises, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA

1974 American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Institute of Arts and Letters Award Juror, American Academy in Rome, sculpture applicants for Prix de Rome Fellowships

1975 Elected to Membership, National Society of Literature and the Arts

1984 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture

1990 The Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Award, The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

1991 Artist’s Fellowship in Sculpture, The New York Foundation for the Arts

1991-92 Nancy Grossman at Exit Art, The Hillwood Art Museum and the Sculpture Center selected one of the three best exhibitions in an art gallery of this season by The American Chapter of the International Art Critics Association

In 1992, she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.

1995 Alumnae Achievement Award, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY 1996-97 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant

2001 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant

In 2008, Grossman was awarded the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award.