Self-portrait, 1932

Grant DeVolson Wood (1891 – 1942) was born in 1891 near Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. His 1930 painting “American Gothic” has become an iconic image of C20th art.

1907 Currants watercolour Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa The family moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa after the death of his father in After graduating from High School, Wood enrolled in an art school in Minneapolis in In 1913 he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Between 1920 and 1828 he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.

But it was the work of the C15th Flemish artist Jan van Eyck that influenced him to take on the clarity of van Eck’s technique and incorporate it in his new works 1919 Autumn Landscape

1919 Old Stone Barn. Between 1924 and 1935 Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house thet he turned into his personal studio that became “5 Turner Alley.” In 1932 Wood helped to found the Stone City Art Colony near his home-town to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country on the subject.

1919c Old Sexton's Place.Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa Regionalism Wood is associated with the American movement of Regionalism that was primarily situated in the Midwest, and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction.

(Carriage Business) He was married to Sara Sherman Maxon from 1935 to He taught painting at the University of Iowa’s School of Art from 1934 to During that time he supervised mural painting projects, mentored students, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the University’s cultural community. Wood died relatively young of pancreatic cancer, one day before his 51st birthday in His estate went to his sister Nan Wood Graham, the model for the female in “American Gothic.” When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Grant Wood’s personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum in davenport, Iowa.

Wood was one of three artists most associated with the movement. The others, John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, returned to the Midwest in the 1930s due to Wood's encouragement and assistance with locating teaching positions for them at colleges in the states of Wisconsin and Kansas, respectively. Along with Benton, Curry, and other Regionalist artists, Wood's work was marketed through Associated American Artists in New York for many years. Wood is considered the patron artist of Cedar Rapids, and his childhood country school is depicted on the 2004 Iowa

Grant Wood, American Gothic (1930), Art Institute of Chicago American Gothic is a painting by American artist Grant Wood in Shown is a farmer and his spinster daughter in front of their house. The models on the painting were Wood’s sister, Nan, wearing a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana, and Wood’s dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby from Iowa. Wood painted the house along with the people he imagined might live there. The house actually exists in Eldon, Iowa. It was built in the American Gothic style. The models never sat in front of the house, and each element was painted separately. The painting measures inches by 24.5 inches, which is equivalent to 74.3 cm by 62.4 cm.

Painting Inspirations Wood saw the house while travelling through the Iowa landscape in the summer of 1930, he was inspired. Some people thought that Grant Wood was making fun of small town folk. The house had an unusual window. The design is based on Gothic architecture which originates from Europe, as opposed to an American farmhouse. The contrast caught the artist’s attention that led to the painting of American Gothic. American gothic house (Jessica Strom, Eldon, Iowa)

1930 Study for American Gothic oil on paperboard 32.1 x 37.2 cm Smithsonian American art Museum, Washington D.C.

Reception of the Painting Wood entered American Gothic at a competition sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially, the judges viewed it as a comic valentine. However, a patron convinced them to award it a bronze medal and a cash prize of $300. The Art Institute bought the painting where it remains to this day. Soon after, the painting began to appear in newspapers. When the image finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowans became furious. A woman threatened to bite Wood’s ear off. However, Grant explained that his intention was not to misrepresent Iowans, but to portray America as a whole. The arrival of the Great Depression was upon the country, the painting was seen as a portrayal of the steadfast American pioneer spirit. Artistic Features The painting is obviously fictional in many ways. First, it has a 19th century theme painted in the 20th century. Second, the title itself refers to the architecture of the house, with the artist taking liberty to add the type of people he believed who may live there. The house’s medieval style window looks like one you may find at a church, in fact the potted plants on the porch and the decorative blind distinguishes the wooden house from a church.

Grant Wood boyhood home, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Listed as one of the most endangered historic sites in Iowa

Wood's sister Nan and his dentist with American Gothic

Huge American Gothic statue in Chicago

1929 Woman with Plants oil on upsom board Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

Parodies The Depression-era understanding of the painting as a depiction of an authentically American scene prompted the first well-known parody, a 1942 photo by Gordon Parks of cleaning woman Ella Watson, shot in Washington, D.C. American Gothic is one of the few paintings to achieve iconic cultural status, along with Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream. It is thus one of the most reproduced – and parodied – images ever made. Many artists have replaced the two people with other known couples and replaced the house with well-known houses. References and parodies of the image have been numerous for generations, appearing regularly in such media as postcards, magazines, animated cartoons, advertisements, comic books, album covers, television shows and other artists. The opening credits of the 1965 television show Green Acres had the main couple in an American Gothic-style pose; cinematic posters of the films For Richer or Poorer, Son In Law, American Gothic, and Good Fences parody the painting. It is also a key motif in Anthony Weigh's play 2,000 Feet Away, which opens with a scene featuring the painting at the Art Institute. The painting was also parodied in a classic commercial for "New Country Corn Flakes", a General Mills product. American Gothic, Washington, D.C. (1942) by Gordon Parks was the first prominent parody of the painting.

A Church in Paris 1920

1920 Café in Paris

1920 Osier

1920 Paris Street

1920 The Gate within the City Walls

Fountain of Voltaire, Chatenay Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa 1920

1923 Untitled from suite "Savage Iowa" (Buffalo Stampede) pencil and wash on paper 30.5 x 80 cm Smithsonian American art Museum, Washington D.C.

1923 Untitled from suite "Savage Iowa" (Cowboy and Indian) pencil and was on paper 25.4 x 68.6 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C Untitled from suite "Savage Iowa" (Clothes Line) pencil and wash on paper 33 x 80 cm

1924 Urns

The Runners, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 1920 Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

The Spotted Man oil on canvas 81.3 x 50.8 cm Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa. 1924

Truck Garden, Moret oil on composition Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, 1924

Yellow Doorway, 1924 Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

1925 Helix Welder, Oil on canvas 46 x 59 cm

The Shop Inspector, 1925 Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

At the Gate, 1926

1926 Parisian Scene

Old Shoes, 1926 Oil on composition board 24.8 x 25.4 cm Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

The Little Chapel, 1926 Chancelade. Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa

The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, 1931 West Branch, Iowa

Daughters of Revolution 1932 Daughters of Revolution is a satirical painting, who claimed that it was his only satire. The painting depicts the founding fathers as cross-dressing members of the Daughters of the American Revolution standing in front of a recreation of Washington Crossing the Delaware. It is part of what Henry Adams called Wood's fascination with "changes of gender“.

Portrait of John B. Turner, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

Portrait of Frances Fiske Marshall, 1929, oil on canvas.

Study for Stone City, 1930 Stone City, Iowa was Wood's first major landscape, painted in the same year as his now famous American Gothic. At the height of his style, Stone City is also the epitome of the dialogue about change that was often threaded through Wood's traditional subjects. Understood in this tranquil, idealized scene of life in harmony with nature was the knowledge that Stone City itself reflected the transitions brought about in a rural community by industrialization. Located on the Wapsipinicon River twenty-six miles from Cedar Rapids, Stone City was a boomtown gone bust: built on the success of its limestone quarries and laid to rest by the development of Portland cement. The land, Wood seems to suggest, has gone back to a purer purpose of grazing animals and growing crops. Wood's interest in the village continued, and it became the site of a summer artist's colony which he ran from 1932 to 1933.

Stone City, Iowa, 1930 Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha NE

Appraisal, Oil on composition board, Dubuque Museum of Art, Iowa

Fall Plowing, 1931 oil on canvas 76.2 x cm The John Deere Collection, Moline, Illinois

Study for "Fall Plowing“, 1931 Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa

Plaid Sweater, 1931 Oil on composition board 74.9 x 61.3 cm University of Iowa Museum of Art

Victorian Survival, 1931 Dubuque Museum of Art, Iowa Victorian Survival, 1931 Davenport Art Gallery

Spring Oaks, 1932

Young Corn, Oil on masonite panel, 61 x 75.9 cm Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa

Boy Milking Cow, 1932 Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Farmer's Wife with Chickens, 1932 Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Arbor Day, 1932 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA

Grant Wood with "Arbor Day" 2004 Iowa state quarter honoring Grant Wood. Elements depicted include: the Schoolhouse, teacher and students planting a tree, (caption): "Foundation in Education", and Grant Wood

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