WOOD, Grant
Grant Wood attained national stature in 1930 with the painting American Gothic (Art Institute of Chicago). He came to be regarded as one of the three primary artists of American regionalism, along with Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889 – 1975) and John Steuart Curry (American, 1897 – 1946). Following the success of American Gothic, Wood turned to images of the people, life, and landscape of the American heartland. He also illustrated archetypal episodes in American history, as in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931) and Parson Weems’ Fable (1939). His works are painted in a distinctive faux naïve style. In 1932 he cofounded the Stone City Art Colony and Art School in rural Iowa, a short-lived community for young midwestern artists. In 1934 Wood became director of the New Deal Public Works Art Project in Iowa, and later that year he started teaching at the University of Iowa. In the midst of controversy over Wood’s position at the university, where the art department was moving more decisively toward modernism, Wood died of liver cancer on February 12, 1942.
