Regionalism · 1930
Grant Wood 1891–1942
Art Institute of Chicago · Chicago
A pitchfork-stiff farmer and his daughter before their Gothic-windowed house — Grant Wood's wry, enduring emblem of rural America.
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Chapter 1 of 7
You are face to face with one of the most recognized images in American art. Grant Wood painted this in 1930, at the very start of the Great Depression, when Regionalism urged artists to find meaning in ordinary American places and people. What you see is not a photograph of rural life — it is an idea of it, precise and quietly unsettling.
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