Jan Groover

Photographer Jan Groover is highly regarded for her formalist, still-life images that most often featured everyday household objects. Strictly devoted to form, Groover often stated that the subjects in her work were devoid of significance, as her only focus was light, texture, and line. She began her art career as a minimalist painter after graduating from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, eventually transitioning to photography in the late 1970s with triptychs and diptychs that captured the movement of automobiles. In 1978 Groover began to experiment with object arrangements using items she found in her kitchen—utensils, cups, spatulas, whisks, glasses and small plant. Rendering these tableaus in full color, Groover often played with depth and focus, literally blurring the contextual elements of each piece. Transforming light and reflective surface, Groover’s work attempted to redefine traditional notions of space, object hood, femininity and photographic convention.

Groover’s work was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions throughout her career, including Janet Borden, Inc., New York, Musee de Perigueux, France, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Center for Photography, Lectoure, France, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Camera Obscura, Stockholm, among others. Group exhibitions include Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1979 she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.