|
|
Grant
Wood, an American painter, was born in Anamosa, Iowa in February,
1892. He was a leader in the art movement known as Regionalism, which
also included the artist Thomas Hart Benton. Woods is also the creator
of one of the more recognized Americna paintings, American Gothic,
which he showcased in 1932. |
He visited Europe
repeatedly from an early age and studied at the Academie Julian in
Paris in 1933. Still, he was mainly self-taught as an artist: he worked
as a camouflage painter during World War One, an interior decorator,
and a metalworker. His early paintings were strongly influenced by
French Impressionism. In 1928, having been commissioned to make stained-glass
windows for the Cedar Rapids Veterans Memorial Building, he traveled
to Munich to supervise the windows' production; there he encountered
early Dutch painting, and was inspired to give up Impressionism in
favor of his characteristic mature style. Under the influence of Memling
and other early Netherlandish masters, Wood began painting with close
attention to sharp, crisp detail. In the Regionalist aesthetic, the
everyday lives of working people are the highest subjects of art;
modern ideas of abstraction are often considered elitist and decadent.
Wood therefore mainly depicted scenes of everyday Midwestern life
in a fresh and sometimes stark manner. His best-known work, American
Gothic (1930), won a bronze medal at an exhibition at the Art
Institute of Chicago, but it caused controversy among some of the
very people it was intended to depict, who interpreted the painting
as broad, insensitive caricature. In the decades since, however, the
work has become one of the most enduring images in American art. Wood
painted many landscapes, as well as other scenes and portraits, including
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931) and a genuinely satirical
work, Daughters of the Revolution (1932). He supervised Federal
Art Projects in Iowa and was assistant professor of fine arts at the
University of Iowa.
|
Featured
Paintings
