Glossy paperback book by Brady M. Roberts, James M. Fennis, James S. Horns, and Helen Mar Parkin - Davenport Museum of Art

“Concurrent with the widespread isolationist sentiment in America during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Regionalism gained nation popularity as a school of painting synonymous with American values. The triumvirate of Regionalism - Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry - painted scenes of farm life and American folklore in a widely accessible, representational style.

These themes came naturally to Grant Wood (1891-1942), who spent his first ten years on a farm and lived most of his life in Iowa. His best-known paintings, such as Stone City, Iowa and Spring Turing, offer idyllic panoramas of the agrarian Midwest or humorous insights on American types, as in Daughters of Revolution and Appraisal. Now both criticized and applauded for being narrow in focus, descriptive, and storytelling, these paintings epitomized the Regionalist movement and attracted an immense popular audience. Wood lectured nationwide on Regionalism and held a university-level teaching post through which he disseminated his ideals.

Except for Wood’s famous painting American Gothic, the world outside of Iowa seems to have forgotten the work of this unique artist, whose name was once almost a household word. This new book, the catalog of the traveling exhibition Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed, mounted by the Davenport Museum of Art, takes a bold step toward reversing this trend. Richly illustrated with approximately sixty paintings and preparatory studies by the artist, it examines Wood’s modernist tendencies, ranging from his abstract design principles to the lasting influence of paintings by Georges Seurat and German Neue Sachlichkeit artists. The book also provides the most detailed account available of the artist’s working methods, with the first systematic technical analysis ever to be undertaken, prepared by conservation experts from across the country. Illustrations include Grant Wood’s finest works, such as American Gothic; Arnold Comes of Age; Stone City, Iowa; Dinner for Threshers; Spring Turning; Iowa Cornfield; and over fifty more of his compelling compositions.

Authors include Brady M. Roberts Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Davenport Museum of Art, Iowa; James M. Dennis, Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and author of Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture; James S. Horns, a private conservator in Minneapolis with extensive experience in treating Grant Wood paintings; and Helen Mar Parkin, a private conservator in Cincinnati, Ohio, with expertise in American paintings.”

Front Cover: Stone City, Iowa (detail), 1930 Collection of the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska

Back Cover: Self Portrait, 1932 Collection of the Davenport Museum of Art, Davenport, Iowa

Cover designed by John Malmquist Design

ISBN: 9780876544853

Published by Pomegranate Communications, Inc.