Nanno de Groot


Nanno de Groot was a self-taught artist. He belonged to the group of New York School Abstract expressionist artists of the 1950s. He wrote:
In moments of clarity of thought I can sustain the idea that everything on earth is nature, including that which springs forth from a man's mind, and hand. A Franz Kline is nature as much as a zinnia.

Biography

Nanno de Groot was born March 23, 1913 in Balkbrug, Netherlands.
In 1930–1933 he went to the nautical school in Amsterdam, Netherlands. After graduation he received third mate and radio operator's papers. From 1937 to 1941 he worked in the shipping business and lived on the island of Bali. In 1941 he was called for submarine duty by the Dutch Navy and was assigned to Admiral's headquarters on Java where he stayed until the arrival of the Japanese. He was then sent to San Francisco, California USA to serve as liaison officer to the US Army and US Navy in charge of running troop ships between the west coast and the western Pacific, chartered by the United States. He was Lieutenant Commander in charge of the Dutch Port Authority in San Francisco. The position discontinued in 1946. He applied for US citizenship. He became a US citizen in 1954.

Artistic career

Nanno de Groot started drawing at six years of age. His father prevented him to study art at the early age. In 1946 at age 33 he discovered Picasso and he dedicated the rest of his life to painting and drawing. He worked for a year as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. After his marriage to the New York School artist Elise Asher in 1948 de Groot settled in New York on West 12th Street. He and Elise Asher divorced in 1957, and she subsequently married poet Stanley Kunitz.
Nanno de Groot became connected to the pioneers of the New York School. De Groot considered himself an American artist and part of the abstract expressionist movement. He participated from 1954 to 1957 in the invitational New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals These Annuals were important because the participants were chosen by the artists themselves.
Nanno de Groot died on December 26, 1963 in Provincetown, Massachusetts from lung cancer.

Selected solo exhibitions