Mosaic,1951
Oil on Canvas 34x28

Athough he was only there for two short years, Grillo played a seminal role in the San Francisco branch of a movement that would revolutionize American Art. Today, Grillo is acknowledged as perhaps the first and purest “action painter” on the West Coast and one of the most influential painters of San Francisco’s school of Abstract Expressionism” (Thomas Albright, “Art in the San Francisco Bay Area” 1985.)

In 1948, Grillo left San Francisco for the East Coast. Arriving in New York City, he entered the school of Hans Hofmann, an artist who had a love of dazzling colors that matched his own. He also spent summers at Hofmann’s School in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A mutual respect ensued, resulting in Hofmann’s acquiring paintings of Grillo. He then had his first one-man show in New York City at the Artist’s Gallery in 1948. In the 1950’s he experimented with symbolism and action painting and grid-like paintings consisting of small squares based on Hofmann’s teachings. During the early 1950’s The Olsen Foundation acquired watercolors and paintings forming a retrospective collection that traveled to museums and colleges throughout the United States. In addition, works were being acquired at this period for some of the major museums such as: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

During this time in New York, Grillo’s friends included: Willem deKooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Edward Dugmore, Alfred Jensen, Nanno de Groot, Lester Johnson, to name a few.

In the 1960’s, Grillo’s paintings evolved into a series of oversize canvases primarily in a luminous yellow range that to the critics evoked the power of light and sunshine. One artist called Grillo the Renoir of Abstract Expressionism, another compared him to Rubens for his sensuality. One critic brought up Turner, while another waxed eloquently about Venetian luminosity. Exhibitions of these works appeared at the Howard Wise Gallery and the Grace Borgenicht Gallery, both in New York.

During the middle 1960’s, Grillo was artist in residence at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ford Foundation Grant to produce lithographs at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. Returning to New York, he began working in three dimensions and produced fired clay and lost wax pieces cast in bronze anthropomorphic in character, one of which was acquired by the Guggenheim Museum for it’s permanent collection.

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Untitled,1960
Oil on Canvas 50x50

Untitled,1963
Bronze 50x30x24