1891 -1942 · Iowa and American regionalism

Frontal portraits, orderly hills and precision inherited from the masters of the North make Grant Wood the most famous performer in the American Midwest.

Grant Wood was born in 1891 on a farm near Anamosa, Iowa. After the death of his father, his family moved to Cedar Rapids. He trained in stages in Minneapolis, Chicago and Paris, while working as an artisan, decorator, teacher and object designer. His first landscapes bear the imprint of the impressionism discovered in Europe. A trip to Munich in 1928, undertaken to supervise the creation of a stained glass window, caused a turning point: Wood studied the precision of the Flemish and German Primitives, their smooth surfaces, their frontal portraits and their symbolic details. He applies this sharpness to contemporary Iowa. Farms, fields, roads, trees and small towns become simplified, almost sculpted shapes, organized according to a calm rhythm. In 1930, American Gothic brought him immediate fame. In front of a Gothic carpenter-style house, he places his sister Nan and her dentist, dressed like inhabitants of an earlier generation. The fork, the seams, the pointed window and the firm gaze compose a deliberately ambiguous image: homage to rural endurance, ironic observation or both at the same time. Wood becomes, with Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, one of the main representatives of regionalism, a movement which affirms American subjects facing the European avant-garde during the Great Depression. His landscapes transform the hills of the Midwest into undulating volumes and cultures into decorative motifs. His portraits, including Nan's and his Self-Portrait, combine psychological truth, controlled pose and attention to props. Appointed professor at the University of Iowa, Wood defends the idea that an artist can create from his territory without provincialism. He died in Iowa City in 1942. His work remains famous for its ability to make familiar, strange and monumental the ordinary life of the heart of the United States. He died in Iowa City in 1942. His work remains famous for its ability to make familiar, strange and monumental the ordinary life of the heart of the United States. He died in Iowa City in 1942. His work remains famous for its ability to make familiar, strange and monumental. The "Grant Wood" selection notably compares American Gothic and Self-portrait. His reading favors light.

Grant Wood looks at Iowa through the eyes of the masters of the North: each face, furrow and house becomes precise, symbolic and ambiguous enough to resist a single interpretation.