Grant Wood. American Gothic (1930)

Grant Wood

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting

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American Gothic (1930). Grant Wood
Oil on Fiberboard. 74 cm x 62 cm
Art Institute of Chicago. United States

This simple portrait of the farmers is one of the most known paintings of the American art of the 20th century. (And may be of other centuries as well).

Around 1930, in opposition to the innovating movements and styles and the avant-garde and the new industrial urbanizations (“progress”), a group of American painters of the Middle West, whose spokesperson was Thomas Hart Brenton, wanted to “rescue” the costumes, the tradition and the regional culture.

They portrayed all that with a realistic, classical style, consistent with that idea of revaluing the folklore in opposition to “modernity.”

That type of artistic movement is called regionalism in general, and in this case we are talking about the American Regionalism Movement of the 1930s and early 1940s.

Grant Wood and the artists of his group wanted to glorify and immortalize rural North America and small towns.

And as we can imagine, this nationalist movement ended up being valued and decidedly popular.

The farmers with their gestures and the ogival window in their house —gothic as in many cathedrals we know— generate an almost religious image. Isn’t like a “sanctification” of the farmer and the tradition of a whole nation?

Recommended links:

Nighthawks (1942). Edward Hopper.

In the Mind of Edward Hopper.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: When Will You Marry?, Paul Gauguin.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Mont Saint-Victoire, Paul Cézanne.

The “Avant-garde” movements.

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