Groucho

$200.00

13 in stock

Only twenty-five (25) prints of GROUCHO by Drew Friedman were produced for this 2016 edition. Each print is signed in the lower right, hand-titled in the center, and numbered in the lower left (all beneath the image).

The image area is 20″ high x 14″ wide on an untrimmed 22″ x 17″ sheet. Paper, ink, and production specifications, as well as shipping details, are available on our PRINT SPECS page.

Prices will increase for subsequent prints as the edition depletes. Purchase price does not include shipping costs, which are calculated during checkout.

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Description

Drew Friedman loves the Marx Brothers (who doesn’t?), and he’s created quite a few group and individual portraits of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo over the years—several of which have been issued as limited edition fine art prints. The trio as they appeared in A Night at the Opera was issued in 2012 (left to right: Leonard, Julius and Adolph); Groucho hosting You Bet Your Life (with the marionette duck) was issued in 2010; and octogenarian Groucho in a Capt. Spaulding pith helmet was issued in 2011.

This portrait of Groucho with his greasepaint mustache, raised eyebrows and omnipresent cigar captures the comedian as he appeared around 1936, at the peak of the Marx Brothers’ movie stardom. Their 1933 film Duck Soup, today considered a masterpiece, was a box office flop for Paramount. The now Zeppo-less brothers were invited by producer Irving Thalberg to MGM, where they starred in two successive hits, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Sadly, their films became progressively worse and they ostensibly retired as a team after The Big Store in 1941. Asked in later years why they continued to appear in films together for close to another decade, Groucho, referring to his eldest brother’s gambling habit, would answer, “Because Chico needed the money.”