Grant Wood (1891–1942)
810 2nd Ave SE, Cedar Rapids IA, 52403
319-366-7503
ABOUT
Grant Wood lived and worked in here from 1924 to 1935, when he achieved his mature style. Visitors have the opportunity to stand where American Gothic was painted. The building itself was heavily modified by Grant Wood to feature more living space and unexpected but useful design features. Visitors will experience a brief video encapsulating Grant Wood’s life and then a free docent guided tour of the Studio itself.
SPECIAL RESOURCES
“I had to go to France in order to appreciate Iowa.”
— Grant Wood
Grant Wood (1891–1942)
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.
LEARN MORE
The studio reflects Wood’s interest in architecture and design. Famous for wearing farmer’s bib overalls, Wood created the interior of his studio by combining aspects of a humble Arts and Crafts style bungalow with a simple European peasant’s lodgings – complete with exposed wooden beams, crude wooden floors, roughly textured walls and ceiling, and built-in niches for flowers, art, and artifacts.
In addition to American Gothic, Wood created many of his most famous paintings in this studio, including Woman with Plants (1929), Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931), Daughters of the Revolution (1932), and Dinner for Threshers (1934). These works made Wood an internationally famous artist and linked him with several other prominent Midwestern painters, notably John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, who became known as the American Regionalists. The Grant Wood Studio is owned and operated by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, which has the world’s largest collection of works by Wood. The Museum is located just three blocks from the Grant Wood Studio.
