Gronk, 1954-

Biography

Born in Los Angeles in 1954, Gronk began his artistic career at a young age by organizing performance pieces with a group of collaborators that included Robert Legorreta "Cyclona" and Mundo Meza. In the early 1970s, he co-founded the art collective Asco, along with Harry Gamboa Jr., Willie Herrón and Patssi Valdez. Through their public, guerilla art interventions and conceptual practices like "No Movies," the group constituted a unique tendency within the Chicano art movement, while it also actively engaged prevalent avant-garde movements. During his tenure with Asco, Gronk also developed his career as an individual artist working in a diverse range of media: murals, canvas painting, drawing, live performance, mail art, printmaking and photography. By 1985, Gronk had secured representation with the Daniel Saxon Gallery and embarked upon a successful career as an exhibiting artist. He quickly became one of the most prominent Chicano painters in the United States, and was featured in many of the major exhibitions featuring Latino and/or Hispanic art over the course of the next two decades. Throughout his career, however, Gronk has remained a uniquely multi-faceted artist, and has recently completed large-scale installation paintings, critically acclaimed set designs for theater and opera productions, and a digital animation short.

From the guide to the The Gronk Papers, 1969-2007, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA)