Biography
Stanley Grimm (b. London 1891- d. 1966) studied in Riga, Russia and at the Knirr Atelier and in Munich (1911), during the Blaue Reiter period. A descendant of the brothers Grimm of fairy tale renown, he was orphaned at an early age and taken to Russia and brought up in Riga by his father's family. In 1913 he married another art student, the Russian Masha Oulpe, in 1914 was interned in Ruhleben, but was exchanged in 1916 and returned to England. In 1918 he went back to Russia and was conscripted by the Bolsheviks to paint numerous propaganda posters. By the end of the year he had escaped from Constadt in a smuggler’s fishing boat to Finland, then to London. Soon after the escape the Crown Princess of Sweden bought works by Grimm from an exhibition of paintings by Ruhleben prisoners and the French painter Henri Matisse, seeing Grimm’s work, praised his gifts and sense of colour.
He finally settled in England at the end of WW1 and lived and painted there until his death. Grimm had solo shows at the Redfern Gallery in 1925, Beaux Arts in 1927, Bloomsbury Gallery in 1930 and the Wertheim Gallery in 1932. He was elected a member of the ROI in 1935 and RP in 1936, his portrait of Sir John Lavery there in 1937 described as “dominating the main gallery”. Other group venues included the Royal Academy, Goupil Gallery, Leicester Galleries and Gallery Edward Harvane. He was a member of Chelsea Arts Club where Adrian Bury remembered him as a giant of aristocratic appearance, “hospitable in the extreme”. Grimm’s patrons included Nancy, Lady Astor; Lord Avon; and Sir Winston Churchill, and his pictures are held in the Uk and international collections.
