Grant Wood

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Grant Wood was born on a farm near Anamosa, Iowa on February 13, 1891. After
his father’s death in 1901, the Wood family moved to Cedar Rapids where Grant attended
school and even at an early age revealed his artistic talent. He and his friend, Marvin Cone,
made scenery for plays and drawing for their high school yearbook and both were
enthusiastic volunteers at the Cedar Rapids Art Association. On the night of his high
school graduation in 1910, Grant Wood boarded a train for Minneapolis where he enrolled
in art school. He returned home in 1911 and began teaching in a one-room country school.
In 1913, he moved to Chicago to attend the Art Institute and worked in a silversmith
shop. Later, after serving in the Army as a camouflage painter, Wood once again returned
to Cedar Rapids and taught art in the public schools.(Cedar Rapids Museum of Art 1)

He served as artist in residence at the University of Iowa from 1935 to 1942.
While abroad, Grant Wood was exposed to current trends in European painting
butconcentrated on the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles. In this, he was
severaldecades behind European painters but current with most American artists. Wood
is best known for his later paintings, which depicts the scenes and people of his native
Iowa. A leader in the regionalists school of 20th century American art, he was strongly
influenced by the subject matter and technique of various German and Flemish painters of
the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). (Grant Wood Painting 1) In translating
their stylized formality to the American scene, however, he added his own distinctive
touches of irony and realism. This satirical treatment can be observed in Wood's most
famous work, the double portrait American Gothic.
Stone City, Fall Plowing and American Gothic are present subject matter in the
title. They are in artistic form which informs us about life. He is the inten...