23 Facts About Grant Wood

Grant DeVolson Wood was an American artist and representative of Regionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest.

Grant Wood is particularly well known for American Gothic, which has become an iconic example of early 20th-century American art.

Soon thereafter, Grant Wood began as an apprentice in a local metal shop.

In 1913, Grant Wood enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied from 1913 to 1916.

From 1919 to 1925, Grant Wood taught art to junior high school students in the Cedar Rapids public school system.

For example, he built a bench for students who broke the rules to sit on while waiting punishment from the school principal, which Grant Wood titled Mourner's Bench, a humorous reference to the mourner's bench used in Methodist churches.

From 1924 to 1935, Grant Wood lived with his mother in the hayloft of a carriage house in Cedar Rapids, which he had converted into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley".

Between 1922 and 1928, Grant Wood made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially Impressionism and post-Impressionism.

In 1932, Grant Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression.

In 1934, Grant Wood was offered a position working and teaching in Iowa City as Director of a New Deal Public Works of Art Project.

Grant Wood taught painting at the university's School of Art until 1941.

Grant Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although best known for his paintings, Grant Wood worked in a large number of media, including lithography, ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects.

Grant Wood is associated with the American movement of Regionalism, which was primarily situated in the Midwest, and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction.

Grant Wood was one of three artists most associated with the movement.

Grant Wood is considered the patron artist of Cedar Rapids, and his childhood country school is depicted on the 2004 Iowa State Quarter.

Grant Wood's best known work is his 1930 painting American Gothic, which is one of the most famous paintings in American art, and one of the few images to reach the status of widely recognized cultural icon, comparable to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Grant Wood's inspiration came from Eldon, southern Iowa, where a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with an upper window in the shape of a medieval pointed arch provided the background and the painting's title.

Grant Wood's sister insisted that the painting depicts the farmer's daughter, disliking suggestions it was the farmer's wife, since that would mean that she looked older than she preferred to think of herself.

The compositional severity and detailed technique derive from Northern Renaissance paintings, which Grant Wood had seen during his visits to Europe; after this he became increasingly aware of the Midwest's own legacy, which informed the work.

Grant Wood was married to Sara Sherman Maxon from 1935 to 1938.

On February 12,1942, Grant Wood died at Iowa City university hospital of pancreatic cancer, one day shy of his 51st birthday.

When Grant Wood died, his estate went to his sister, Nan Grant Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic.

In 2009, Grant Wood was awarded the Iowa Prize, the state's highest citizen honor.