- Date of birth: 13 Feb 1891
- Date of death: 13 Feb 1942
- Country: USA
Biography:
The first mention of the name of Grant wood, most of the people in memory POPs up the most famous painting called “American Gothic”. It is so famous painting that many unmistakably recognize him, not even knowing the author. Her image publicized by the media, used in many works in cartoons and feature films. The General population pattern is known for a wonderful the Intro from the TV series “Desperate Housewives”.
Due to the tremendous popularity of the paintings of Grant wood has almost become a “master of one picture”. In fact, his legacy is much broader. For US he is a bright representative of American art called Regionalism. His work is distinctive and recognizable, and that the artist is extremely important.
The future master was born in 1891, in 1913 he began to study at the art school of the University of Chicago. Interestingly, he is not painting and creating silver jewelry. However, he was very interested in contemporary painterly styles of impressionism and postimpressionism, so for eight years, since 1920, wood was four times visited Europe, studying and analyzing the different painting techniques and styles. But the innovations did not become part of his creative manner.
Most of all the spirit and style of images he was close to Jan van Eyck – Flemish painter of the early Renaissance. His works were particularly clear graphics and “smoothness” of the image, and besides, he was not afraid to portray people as they are, without idealizing their features.
During the great Depression wood organized a colony of the arts called Stone Town, that artists were able to survive this difficult period. From 1934 to 1941, master worked as a lecturer at the University of Iowa. This time was very fruitful – the artist wrote the canvas, worked with the students and even oversaw projects for the wall paintings. Unfortunately, the way of life of the artist was too short, even before the age of 51, he died from a severe form of cancer in 1942. But we still have his unique paintings depicting ordinary working people of rural America. Many of them were not understood by his contemporaries, but in our time, his “American Gothic” became literally a cult canvas.
In this picture, many have seen a variety of things. Such celebrity like Gertrude Stein, noted satiricall images of wood in the canvas, although the master himself was diametrically opposed opinions. For it is depicted in the painting are ugly the weary farmer and its even more unattractive in appearance daughter – the real heroes of America, the salt of the earth, managed to survive in a terribly harsh and hungry years of the great Depression. These people stand firmly on their feet, they literally kept the welfare and prosperity of society. It is symbolic that among numerous wood works this was the main piece and a symbol of the rural United States at the time.