Grant Wood
| Grant Wood | |
|---|---|
Self-portrait, 1932
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| Born |
Grant DeVolson Wood February 13, 1891 Anamosa, Iowa |
| Died | February 13, 1942 (aged 51) Iowa City, Iowa |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | School of the Art Institute of Chicago |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work | American Gothic |
| Movement | Regionalism |
Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891 – February 13, 1942) was an American painter best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly American Gothic, an iconic painting of the 20th century.
Grant Wood was born in rural Iowa four miles (6 km) east of Anamosa in 1891; his mother moved the family to Cedar Rapids after his father died in 1901. Soon thereafter he began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating from Washington High School, Wood enrolled in The Handicraft Guild, an art school run entirely by women in Minneapolis in 1910 (today it is a prominent artist collective in the city.) He was said to have later returned to the Guild to paint American Gothic. A year later Wood returned to Iowa, where he taught in a rural one-room schoolhouse. In 1913 he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and performed some work as a silversmith.
From 1922 to 1928, Wood made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. But it was the work of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck that influenced him to take on the clarity of this technique and to incorporate it in his new works.
From 1922 to 1935, Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house in Cedar Rapids, which he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up). In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country on the topic. As his classically American image was solidified, his bohemian days in Paris were expunged from his public image.
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