(b New York, 28 April 1940). American sculptor. She studied art at the Pratt Institute, New York (1958-62), and was subsequently awarded a Haskell Scholarship for Foreign Travel in 1962. Her early influences included the American painter Richard Lindner and sculptor David Smith. Grossman's work addresses both philosophical and physical aspects of sculpture. Her first assemblages in the early 1960s incorporated numerous items from an extensive gathering of used materials and found objects. Her works are identified particularly with feminist subjects and sexual themes; they frequently contain an element of repressed sensuality. During the 1970s she became known for her meticulously crafted, life-size male heads, swathed in leather. After an absence from exhibiting between 1977 and 1980, Grossman presented new sculptures that moved away from the obsessive object-totemic works formed from disparate elements bound together with cane and wire. Masks of studded brass and leatherwork nevertheless continued to suggest an undercurrent of sexual tension.
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