Grant Wood | |
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 Self-portrait, 1932 | |
| Born | Grant DeVolson Wood (1891-02-13)February 13, 1891 Anamosa, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | February 12, 1942(1942-02-12) (aged 50) Iowa City, Iowa, U.S. |
| Education | School of the Art Institute of Chicago |
| Known for | Painting, architect |
| Notable work | American Gothic |
| Movement | Regionalism |
| Relatives | Nan Wood Graham (sister) |
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Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891 – February 12, 1942) was an American artist and representative ofRegionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural AmericanMidwest. He is particularly well known forAmerican Gothic (1930), which has become an iconic example of early 20th-centuryAmerican art.[1]
Wood was born in ruralIowa, 4 mi (6.43 km) east ofAnamosa, on February 13, 1891, the son of Hattie DeEtte Wood (née Weaver) and Francis Maryville Wood.[3][4] His maternal grandparents worked as innkeepers and his paternal grandparents were slaveholders in Virginia.[5] Hattie moved the family toCedar Rapids after Francis died in 1901. Soon thereafter, Wood began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating fromWashington High School, he enrolled inThe Handicraft Guild, an art school run entirely by women inMinneapolis in 1910.
In 1913, Wood enrolled at theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied from 1913 to 1916.[6] Wood also performed some work as asilversmith.
Near the end ofWorld War I, Wood joined thearmy, working as an artist designing camouflage scenes as well as other art.[7]
From 1919 to 1925, Wood taught art to junior high school students in theCedar Rapids public school system. This employment provided financial stability, and its seasonal nature allowed him summer trips to Europe to study art. Wood also took a leave of absence for the 1923–1924 school year so he could spend an entire year studying in Europe.[8] During his stint as a teacher, Wood experimented with woodworking and metalworking. For example, he built a bench for students who broke the rules to sit on while waiting punishment from the school principal, which Wood titledMourner's Bench, a humorous reference to themourner's bench used inMethodist churches.[9]
From 1924 to 1935, Wood lived with his mother in the hayloft of a carriage house inCedar Rapids, which he had converted into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up).
Between 1922 and 1928, Wood made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especiallyImpressionism andpost-Impressionism. However, it was the work of the 15th-century Flemish artistJan van Eyck that influenced him to take on the clarity of this technique and incorporate it in his new works.[citation needed] Additionally, Wood's 1928 trip toMunich was to oversee the making of thestained glass windows he had designed for aVeterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids.[10]
In 1932, Wood helped found theStone City Art Colony near his hometown to help artists get through theGreat Depression. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts,[11] lecturing throughout the country on the topic.[12] As Wood's classically American image was solidified, his bohemian days in Paris were expunged from his public persona.[13]
In 1934, Wood was offered a position working and teaching inIowa City as Director of aNew DealPublic Works of Art Project (PWAP). While headquartered in Iowa City and associated with theUniversity of Iowa, he assisted other artists and art students in producing a set of murals forIowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Once his PWAP concluded in 1934, the University of Iowa offered Wood a three-year-term as an Associate Professor of Fine Art. He taught painting at the university'sSchool of Art until 1941. During that time, Wood supervised mural painting projects, mentored students includingElizabeth Catlett, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the university's cultural community.
Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although best known for his paintings, Wood worked in a large number of media, includinglithography,ink,charcoal,ceramics,metal,wood andfound objects.
Throughout his life, Wood hired out his talents to many Iowa-based businesses as a steady source of income. This included painting advertisements, sketching rooms of a mortuary house for promotional flyers and, in one case, designing the corn-themed décor (includingchandelier) for the dining room of a hotel.
Wood is associated with the American movement ofRegionalism, which was primarily situated in the Midwest, and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction.[14]
Wood was one of three artists most associated with the movement. The others,John Steuart Curry andThomas 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 Wisconsin and Missouri, respectively. Along with Benton, Curry, and other Regionalist artists, his work was marketed throughAssociated 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 IowaState Quarter.
Wood's best known work is his 1930 paintingAmerican Gothic,[15] which is also one of the most famous paintings in American art,[14] and one of the few images to reach the status of widely recognized cultural icon, comparable toLeonardo da Vinci'sMona Lisa andEdvard Munch'sThe Scream.[1]
American Gothic was first exhibited in 1930 at theArt Institute of Chicago, where it is still located. It was awarded a $300 prize and made news stories nationwide, bringing Wood immediate recognition. Since then, it has been borrowed and satirized endlessly[14] for advertisements and cartoons.[15]
Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such asGertrude Stein andChristopher Morley, assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of repression and narrow-mindedness of rural small-town life. It was seen as part of the trend toward increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of such novels asSherwood Anderson's 1919Winesburg, Ohio,Sinclair Lewis's 1920Main Street, andCarl Van Vechten'sThe Tattooed Countess.[1][14] Wood rejected this reading of it.[14] With the onset of theGreat Depression, it came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit.[15] Another reading is that it is an ambiguous fusion of reverence and parody.[14]
Wood's inspiration came fromEldon, southern Iowa, where a cottage designed in theGothic Revival style with an upper window in the shape of a medieval pointed arch provided the background and also the painting's title.[14] Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house."[1] The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter, figures modeled by the artist's sister, Nan (1900–1990), and his dentist.[14] Wood's sister insisted that the painting depicts the farmer's daughter, disliking suggestions it was the farmer's wife, since that would mean that she looked older than she preferred to think of herself. The dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950), was from Cedar Rapids. The couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man'spitchfork symbolizing hard labor. The woman is dressed in a dark print apron mimicking 19th-centuryAmericana with acameo brooch.
The compositional severity and detailed technique derive fromNorthern Renaissance paintings, which Wood had seen during his visits to Europe; after this he became increasingly aware of the Midwest's own legacy, which also informed the work. It is a key image of Regionalism.[14]
In 1940, Wood and eight other prominent American artists were hired to document and interpret dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the filmThe Long Voyage Home, a cinematic adaptation ofEugene O'Neill's plays.[16]
Wood was married to Sara Sherman Maxon from 1935 to 1938. Friends considered the marriage a mistake for him.[17]
Wood was aclosetedhomosexual. There was an unsuccessful attempt by a colleague, Lester Longman, to get him fired both on explicit moral grounds and for his advocacy of regionalism.[18] CriticJanet Maslin states that his friends knew him to be "homosexual and a bit facetious in his masquerade as anoverall-clad farm boy."[13] University administration at Iowa dismissed the allegations, and Wood would have returned as a professor if not for his growing health problems.[19]
Wood was aFreemason and Member of Mount Hermon Lodge #263[20] in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, from 1921 to 1924.[21] After receiving his third Degree of Master Mason he paintedThe First Three Degrees of Freemasonry in 1921.[22] However, he was suspended for not paying dues in March 1924, and had no further association with the organization.[21]
On February 12, 1942, Wood died atIowa City University Hospital ofpancreatic cancer, one day before his 51st birthday.[23] Wood is buried at Riverside Cemetery inAnamosa, Iowa.[24]
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When Wood died, his estate went to his sister,Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed inAmerican Gothic. When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Wood's personal effects and various works of art, became the property of theFigge Art Museum inDavenport, Iowa.
TheWorld War IILiberty ShipSS Grant Wood was named in his honor.
One of Iowa's nine regional Area Education Agencies, Grant Wood Area Education Agency was established in 1974 and serves Eastern Iowa.[25]
In 2009, Grant was awarded the Iowa Prize, the state's highest citizen honor.[26]
The Grant Wood Art Colony grew out of Jim Hayes’s 1975 purchase of Wood's historic Iowa City home at 1142 Court Street. The house was placed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1978 and was featured in the 2016 documentary,1142: Beyond the Bricks. Over the years, Hayes purchased four land parcels behind the home. This addition led to the expansion of his vision for 1142 to include a rotating community of artists modeled after the colonies that Wood tried to establish in his lifetime such as the one at Stone City. Hayes partnered with the University of Iowa on his vision, and since 2011, the Grant Wood Art Colony holds a recurring symposium and hosts artist fellows in painting & drawing, printmaking, and interdisciplinary performance. The fellows are provided with furnished living quarters in the houses behind 1142.
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