Adam Grant
1924-1992
Warsaw, Poland – Toledo, Ohio
Selected paintings by Adam Grant at 20 North Gallery
For purchase inquiries, please contact 20 North Gallery:
419-241-2400 or info@20northgallery.com
20 North Gallery proudly represents the estate of Adam Grant. Additional artworks by Adam Grant are available upon request; contact 20 North Gallery for details.
Click here to download the Adam Grant: Art for Life exhibition catalogue.
Click here to download the catalogue from the 2004 international exhibit,
Adam Grant: Figure Master.
Artist Biography
Adam (Grochowski) Grant; 1924 – 1992
Born in Warsaw in 1924, a young Adam Grochowski was discouraged by his family from pursuing a professional art career and told that art would “never earn the price of your bread.” In his teens, Adam was sent to the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Mauthausen, where he literally traded his art for bread, enabling him to survive. In addition to grueling physical labor, the Nazi officers assigned him to create paintings for the camps. Unbeknownst to them, Adam also used his art to defy his captors, by preserving in hidden artwork the identities of fellow prisoners.
After the liberation, Adam spent five years in a refugee camp, again using his art to provide hope and employment for the future. Adam emigrated to the United States in 1950, securing a job with the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit, Michigan, that had begun to produce the now-legendary Paint By Number kits. There, Adam met fellow designer and future wife, Margaret “Peggy” Brennan. The couple married shortly before the business was sold to the Toledo-owned Craft Master company. Americanizing his name, the new Mr. and Mrs. Grant moved to Toledo, Ohio, where Peggy managed his fine art career and Adam painted until his death in 1992.
During his lifetime, Adam Grant’s fine art paintings were widely exhibited in galleries, as well as juried and solo exhibitions throughout the world, frequently garnering prestigious awards, including the American Painters in Paris Exhibit; Columbus Museum of Art’s Best of Show, numerous top honors in the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition and the Toledo Museum of Art Roulet Medal. He was the featured painter in the January 1973 edition of American Artist. In recent years, Peggy, the executrix of his artistic estate, has organized and facilitated exhibits of his work in Ohio, Indiana, Poland and Saudi Arabia.
His work is part of many prestigious private, corporate and public collections, including The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; Collegium Maius Museum-Krakow, Poland; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana; Bowling Green State University, Ohio; Monroe Community College, Michigan; The University of Toledo; Toledo Federation of Art Societies; the Polish Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Auschwitz Museum, Poland. In 2011, Grant’s work was accepted as a part of the permanent collection at the inauguration of the Polish History Museum in Warsaw, forming the symbolic return of Adam Grochowski-Grant to his native city. In 2018, Grant’s artist proof for the Paint By Number design The Last Supper (after DaVinci) was accepted into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art—fitting tribute to a man who literally lived for art.
In 2016, Adam Grant’s work was the subject of a solo exhibit at 20 North Gallery, Adam Grant: Art for Life.
His Excellency, Polish Ambassador Adam Kulach, Delegation of the European Union to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, traveled to Toledo to view the exhibition and commend Peggy Grant for honoring her late husband’s work. 20 North Gallery is honored to have been selected by Peggy to serve as the estate representatives for her late husband’s artistic legacy.
Previous 20 North Gallery exhibitions including artwork by Adam Grant
- Adam Grant: Figure Master: October 11 – November 30, 1996. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- Derby Days 2003: May 3 – June 13, 2003. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- Tenth Year Exhibit: September 26 – October 30, 2003. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- Adam Grant: Unseen Treasures: June 17 – August 7, 2005. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- Gallery Artists Group: September 2 – October 2, 2005. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- Poland’s Tribute to Adam Grant: August 12, 2009. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- The 16th Annual Black History Month Exhibit: January 28 – March 12, 2011. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- 20 North/20 Years: April 20 – May 26, 2012. Click to view exhibit postcard.
- Adam Grant: Art for Life: June 25 – September 30, 2016. Click to view exhibit page.
- The Grant Collection: January 12 – March 31, 2018. Click to view exhibit page.
- The Grant & Goodridge Paint By Number Collections: January 12 – March 31, 2018. Click to view exhibit page.
- Salon: the Collection of Ann Goodridge: April 19 – June 30, 2018. Click to view exhibit page.