22 Facts About Grant Wood

Grant DeVolson Wood was an American painter 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.

Grant Wood's mother moved the family to Cedar Rapids after his father died in 1901.

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

Close to the end of World War I, Grant Wood joined the US military, working as an artist designing camouflage scenes as well as other art.

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

From 1922 to 1935, Grant Wood lived with his mother in the loft of a carriage house in Cedar Rapids, which he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley".

From 1922 to 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.

From 1934 to 1941 Grant Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa's School of Art.

From 1935 to 1938, Grant Wood was married to Sara Sherman Maxon.

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.

Grant Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although he is best known for his paintings, he 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 and not wife, disliking suggestions it was the farmer's wife, since that would mean that she looks older than Grant Wood's sister preferred to think of herself.

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

Grant Wood was hired in 1940, along with eight other prominent American artists, to document and interpret dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the film The Long Voyage Home, a cinematic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's plays.