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Karl Heinrich Gruppe

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Karl Heinrich Gruppe
Sculptor, portrait sculpture, painting
American, (1893–1982)
Karl Heinrich Gruppe was the son of the painter Charles Paul Gruppé (1860-1940), born in Rochester, New York. His father, Charles, was a Canadian-born painter who had spent significant time in Holland where he gained the appreciation of the Dutch Royal Family for his landscape and marine paintings.

Karl Gruppe was destined to great things and became a sculptor in marble and bronze who held the position of chief Sculptor of Monument Restoration Project for the New York City Parks Department.

Karl Gruppe was raised in the Netherlands, first studying sculpture in Antwerp at the Royal Academy with Franz Juis and later at the Art Students League of New York. His instructor at the League was the Austrian-born Karl Bitter, a follower adept in the Academic tradition. Bitter, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1889, left his mark on the public statuary of New York in his designs for the doors of Trinity Church and in his initial designs for Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan. When Bitter was killed in a car accident in 1915, he left unfinished his models for the Pulitzer Fountain at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, as well as his design for Henry Hudson Park in the Bronx (In 1938, Robert Moses revived these plans, charging Gruppe with bringing Bitter’s sketches into life as monumental sculptures.)

Gruppe spent years after his mentor’s death in the Marine Corps (during World War I) and establishing himself as a sculptor in Bitter’s lineage. In 1930, Gruppe was an assistant to Malvina Hoffman in her New York studio during the execution of her Facial Masks for the proposed Unity of Mankind exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York. He had previous success and commissions of his own, as had other of Hoffman’s assistants on this huge undertaking.

Away from the city, he shared a studio with his brother, landscape painter Emile Gruppe, at Rocky Neck, Massachusetts.

He was a member of the National Academy of Design and served as Vice President in 1957. In 1949, he served as President of the National Sculpture Society.

In 1980, Karl Gruppe was awarded the National Sculpture Society's "Special Medal of Honor" for his "notable achievement in, and for encouragement to American Sculpture." Previous honorees included Daniel Chester French, Herbert Adams, Paul Manship, Adolph A. Weinman, James Earle Fraser, and Malvina Hoffman.

He was a Member of the National Advisory board, Sculpture Review; Advisory Board, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina.; Life Member of the New York Numismatic Club; National Council Member of the National Academy of Design, 1968-71; First Vice President of the National Academy of Design 1956-59; Fellow in Perpetuity Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1956; President of the National Sculpture Society, 1960; Elected Centurion of the Century Club, 1950; Elected Academician of the National Academy of Design, 1950; Elected to the Art Commission Associates, 1948; Appointed Sculpture Member of the New York City Art Commission, 1944-1947; Elected Associate of the National Academy of Design, 1939; Elected Chairman of the Committee on Sculpture of Fine Arts Federation of New York, 1938-1941; Elected Fellow of the National Sculpture Society 1924.

Karl Gruppe has works in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Karl Gruppe died in 1982 in Southold, New York.

Sources:
Kinkel, Maryanne, Races of Mankind: The Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman, University of Illinois Press, 2011
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
http://www.gruppegallery.com/Family.htm
https://www.msfineart.com/artists/karl-gruppe/
http://www.ophirgallery.com/designers/karl-gruppe-american-1892-1982


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