b. 1891 d. 1942
Site Affiliation: Grant Wood Studio
Hailed as one of America’s foremost Regionalist painters in the 1930s, Grant Wood strove to depict archetypal rural subjects that embodied the values of hard work, community, and austerity. Eschewing the idioms of avant-garde European art, Wood depicted his native Midwest with the clarity and precision he observed in Northern Renaissance art and the organic lines and curves of Art Deco design, melding these disparate styles into a uniquely American vision. In painting small town and rural life, Wood gave the American public an idealized vision of itself at a time during the Great Depression when most common, working Americans faced great hardship.
In subsequent decades, his work has been praised and derided by critics and public alike, but his paintings, and in particular American Gothic, remain some of the most iconic, and appropriated, paintings created by an American artist, thus providing Wood with a permanent place in American popular culture.
Primary Medium: Sculpture, Painting, Metalwork
Primary Stylistic Term: American Regionalism
Recommended Publications: Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables by Barbara Haskell (2018); Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace Of American Gothic, ed. Jane C. Milosch (2005)