?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
GRONK (GLUGIO) NICANDRO (1954-)
Nada. Color pen and inks on linen handkerchief. 381x419 mm; 15x16½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right. 1977.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, California.
Gronk (Glugio Gronk Nicandro) is a Los Angeles-based performance artist and painter. He uses thick layers of intensely colored acrylic paint to create expansive, expressionistic images. His symbols and characters emanate less from waking life than from the unconscious zone where visions and nightmares take shape.
Gronk was a founding member of ASCO, a multi-media arts collective based in Los Angeles which was active in the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by European film, existentialism, and literature—especially the work of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Samuel Beckett. Gronk as a member of ASCO made "movies without film" and farcical "happenings" or street performances.
In 1977, Gronk was one of the founders of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Gronk's involvement with LACE often involved his creation and execution of murals, many of which were considered controversial. Indeed, other artists criticized ASCO and Gronk for being too nontraditional. Gronk often clashed with founder of East LA's Self Help Graphics, Sister Karen Boccalero, who he called "the smoking nun."
Gronk has not always sought to bring his art to just those who regularly visit galleries: he has circulated fliers about his work at "bus stops, seeking workers, students and the people of the streets." Gronk uses his "lowbrow" style to confront the viewer and ask them to rethink "visual paradigms," using humor and irony to make his statements. One of his most visible challenges to the status quo took place as a member of ASCO when he, and co-members Harry Gamboa and Willie Herron, tagged their names on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) after being told that LACMA didn't collect Chicano art because it wasn't "fine art."
