The two people living in their sturdy well crafted wooden house armed with their down to earth qualities of resilience fortitude and pride represent those who are most likely to overcome the hardship of the 1930s.
American gothic painting grant wood 1930.
In 1930 grant wood submitted his painting american gothic to a show at the art institute of chicago.
He was inspired to paint what is now known as the american gothic house in eldon iowa along with the kind of people he fancied should live in that house.
As an act of reassurance just as the great depression was beginning to bite.
Looking for inspiration wood noticed the dibble house a small white house built in the carpenter gothic architectural style.
In august 1930 grant wood an american painter with european training was driven around eldon iowa by a young painter from eldon john sharp.
Grant wood is known for his stylized and subtly humorous scenes of rural people iowa cornfields and mythic subjects from american history such as the art institute s iconic painting american gothic 1930.
Wood painted the house along with the people he imagined might live there.
Adding a frame to finish this american gothic c 1930 art print is the best way to not only protect it but easily hang it as wall decor.
It depicts presumably a farming couple either married or a father and daughter standing in front of their frame house with a large gothic window.
But in fact wood created american gothic as an affirmative statement about traditional american values.
He sketched out the house on an envelope determined to use it as a backdrop in what would become his most famous painting.
Shown is a farmer and his spinster daughter in front of their house.
The models for the couple were grant wood s dentist and his younger sister nan.
For the american politician with a similar name see grant woods.
The models on the painting were wood s sister nan wearing a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century americana and wood s dentist dr.
Along with other midwestern regionalist painters like john steuart curry and thomas hart benton wood advocated for a realistic style and recognizable subjects that showed local places and common people a radically different approach from european modernism and its push toward.
American gothic is a 1930 painting by grant wood in the collection of the art institute of chicago.
Visiting eldon iowa in the summer of 1930 the artist was struck by a little white cottage with a single oversized window created in a style known as carpenter gothic.
Byron mckeeby from iowa.
Readers were outraged by wood s portrayal of them as grim faced puritans.