[1] Gross was born to a Jewish family in Máramaros County, Kingdom of Hungary, in the village of Ökörmező (now known as Mizhhiria, Ukraine), in the Carpathian Mountains.

Gross applied to and was accepted by the art academy in Budapest and studied under the painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklós Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country.

After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Austria shortly before immigrating to the United States in 1921.

He sent money to his brothers Chaim and Avrom-Lieb, who traveled from Vienna to Le Havre, France, where they took a boat to New York City in March 1921.

[3][page needed][ISBN missing] Gross began exhibiting sculpture in group shows of students at the Educational Alliance, and then at the Jewish Art Center in the Bronx.

In 1929, Gross experimented with printmaking, and created an important group of 15 linocuts and lithographs of landscapes, New York City streets and parks, women in interiors, the circus, and vaudeville.

Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art include William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, and Robert Laurent.

A key work from this era, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye maple Acrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick.

Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the Exposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel.

In 1963, Gross and his family moved from their longtime residence at 30 W. 105th Street to Greenwich Village, following the purchase of a four-story historic townhouse and studio at 526 LaGuardia Place.

In 1974, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held the exhibition, Chaim Gross: Sculpture and Drawings, organized by Janet A.

The Jewish Museum's exhibition catalog featured an important essay on Gross by art historian and modern American sculpture specialist Roberta K. Tarbell, Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University.

In the fall of 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings.