Introduction
Grant Wood, American painter who was born in February, 1891 and died in February, 1942. His iconic painting in 20th century with regionalism, American Gothic (1930), which was depicting the rural American Midwest.
About Regionalism
Regionalism, or we can called it American Scene Painting. It is a realist modern art movement in American which was popular form 1920s to 1950s in the United States. In art, Regionalism was a style and defined as painting what an artist lives with, in, or around. There had three main artist associated with the movement, wood was the one, and the others two were John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton. Both of them were American painting. Regionalism advanced figurative …show more content…
He used the farm life of the past of his early life for his inspiration and ideas. Wood thought that American can develop a truly national art through Regionalist art.
The element of his paintings
Wood’s famous painting, American Gothic, 1930. The models in this painting, the woman was his 30 years old sister and the man was 62 years old dentist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the town in the American Midwest where Grant Wood lived. Many of his paintings were painted the rural American Midwest, it because of his family background.
American Gothic, …show more content…
In this picture, the highly detailed, polished style and the rigid line he painted was inspired by Flemish Renaissance art, which Wood studied when he traveling in Europe between 1920 and 1926. The solid colour and shape outline in the picture clear to emphasize the rigid which he would like to show. And all the colour have a little bit grey tone, which made the sadness more outstanding.
The differences with other artist in Regionalism
Grant wood’s painting were more focusing to the characters in the picture, like their facial expression, gesture, also the clothes set. All the things he painted were like calculated, all the distribution of the view and the environment have meaning. The detailed, careful was showing out in his art works. But for the others, like Thomas Hart Benton, was more bold and unreal, like a surrealism. The spirits of his art works were more outstanding, we can felt the power, anger, dissatisfied of the society in his painting.