Grant Wood

The fame and reputation of artist Grant Wood (1891-1942) is inextricably linked to his 1930 painting, American Gothic, easily among the most widely recognized images in American art and, along with Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the most parodied. Purchased for $300 by the Art Institute of Chicago directly from its 43rd Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture, American Gothic made him nationally famous. Along with Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) and John Steurt Curry (1897-1946), Wood is associated with Regionalism, which received its greatest critical acclaim during the nineteen-thirties, only to be dismissed by critics after World War II as reactionary and isolationist.

The interwar period of American art referred to as American Scene Painting had two major developments, Regionalism and Social Realism. Regionalism, with which Grant Wood was associated, can be distinguished from Social Realism by the former’s emphasis on regional landscape, local history, and material culture while the latter emphasized depictions of contemporary societal issues in order to effect social change. Regionalism was more populist, nostalgic, and representational, while Social Realism was more urban, critical, and expressionistic. Participants in both movements were reacting against European influence on American art in the development of Modernism, especially non-objectivism, and felt that artists should be actively engaged in modern life. But insular attitudes in America changed after World War II with the new American pre-eminence in international affairs, and the purely American subjects of Regionalist artists like Grant Wood fell out of favor. Although only 51 when he died, Wood had already experienced negative reactions to his work by the art establishment. Regionalism and Social Realism would give way to Abstract Expressionism, which grew out of European art movements such as Surrealism and German Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism emphasized the primacy of the artist’s individual imagination and/or subconscious as well as the formal qualities of art production—the process and product itself—as appropriate subject matter for art. The general critical disregard for Regionalism prevailed through the 1980s, at which point American art historians began a reassessment of Grant Wood’s work.

Grant DeVolson Wood was born February 13, 1891, in Anamosa, Iowa, to Francis Maryville and Hattie Weaver Wood. He had two older brothers with whom he was not close, and a younger sister, Nan. After the early and unexpected death of his father in 1901, the Woods moved twenty-five miles away from the family farm to nearby Cedar Rapids. Grant lived most of his life in eastern Iowa, and with his mother, Hattie. His sister Nan, with whom he was very close, lived with Grant and their mother until her marriage and posed for her brother on numerous occasions, most notably in American Gothic. Grant Wood married Sara Mason Maxon in the spring of 1935 and moved to Iowa City. Hattie Wood died that fall. His marriage ended in divorce in 1939. Grant Wood died in 1942 from pancreatic cancer.

Wood was not quite self-taught, but his artistic training was sporadic. He drew as a child and self-identified himself as an artist in high school but it was not until after he graduated in 1910 that he enrolled in art classes at the Minneapolis School of Design and Handicraft and Normal Art, studying under Ernest Batchelder, a strong proponent of the Arts & Crafts movement. He studied the next summer with Batchelder. After a year as a teacher, Wood lived in Chicago from 1913 to 1916, enrolling in night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, and attempting to sell jewelry and other metalwork in the Arts & Crafts style. He returned to Cedar Rapids in 1917 and served in the army from 1918-1919, designing camouflage for artillery in Fort Dodge Iowa and Washington D.C. In the early 1920s, Wood traveled to Paris, where he took classes at the Académie Julian. Back in Cedar Rapids, Wood found work as an art teacher and designed a unique studio and living space in an old carriage house. This studio showcased Grant Wood’s wit and ingenuity in its unique furnishings and decorative features such as a front door fashioned from a coffin lid with a clock face to indicate the artist’s whereabouts and expected return. By 1925, Wood had left his teaching job to focus on his art and was doing free-lance work as an artist and home decorator. At this time, Wood began to wear his signature denim overalls, which emphasized his Midwestern and specifically Iowa roots. His third and final visit to Paris was during the summer of 1926, at the end of which he had a one-man exhibition of forty-seven paintings, mostly done in an Impressionist style, at the Galerie Carmine. The exhibition did not receive critical attention or result in sales. Upon his return to Iowa, Wood’s fortunes improved with a major commission in 1927 to create a stained glass window for the Cedar Rapids Veterans Memorial Building. In 1928, he traveled to Munich, where for three months he supervised production of the window, and studied art by Gothic and Northern Renaissance masters at the Alte Pinakothek. He was profoundly affected by their highly detailed realism and use of symbolic objects, and this affected a dramatic change in his work, most notably American Gothic of 1930. Other famous works in his signature style are Woman with Plants (1929), Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931), Daughters of Revolution and Arbor Day (1932), and Parson Weems’ Fable (1939). Along with realism and an eye for details, Wood inserted a gentle satire of his subjects, including himself. In addition to his paintings, Wood produced a number of lithographs for Associated American Artists. Most notable are those illustrating his fellow mid-westerner Sinclair Lewis’ novel, Main Street (1937), published for Limited Editions Club.

Wood established the Stone City Art Colony and Art School for two summers in 1932 and 1933. He was then appointed Director of Public Works of Art Projects in Iowa and Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, despite his lack of a college degree. In 1933, he met John Steuart Curry for the first time and, in 1934, Thomas Hart Benton and the art critic Thomas Craven, who would champion the Regionalist movement. He became permanent faculty at the University of Iowa and began promoting Regionalism across the country; notably he was featured in Time magazine’s 24 December 1934 issue. Wood was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1935 and received several honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison; Lawrence College, Wisconsin; Northwestern University, Illinois; and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. By 1940, however, Wood’s standing at the university was shaken due to criticism by another faculty member on professional and personal grounds. After being forced to take a year’s leave of absence, he was reinstated and appointed full Professor of Fine Arts in the fall of 1941. That year, he developed pancreatic or liver cancer and died only hours before his 51st birthday in February 1942.