Grant Wood And The American Heartland: Prints & Works On Paper

Recently the Irving Arts Center sponsored a wonderful exhibit of lithographs depicting the 1930's "Regionalism" movement. According to the Activity Guide, all the prints in the exhibit were created between, 1937-1941.  The title of the exhibit was "Grant Wood And The American Heartland".  

Grant Wood
1891 - 1942

Grant Wood trained at various artistic venues in the US and even studied abroad. Grant came into prominence when his iconic painting, "American Gothic", was completed in 1930 and placed on display at the Art Institute of Chicago that same year. It is now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago and is part of their permanent collection.

                                                           Art Institute of Chicago

The first picture on view at the exhibit was by Grant Wood and it was titled "The Village", which was oil on canvas and was painted in 1925. The Travelling Toe was able to grab a photo of it before the sign said no photography allowed...yikes!!!

Next to it was a print of a large stained glass window which was commissioned to Grant in 1927. When it was completed, it was titled "The Veterans Memorial Window" and was installed in the Veterans Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa - where it is still on display.

The window is 24 feet high by 20 feet wide and took 2 years to complete. It is made up fo 10,00 pieces of stained glass.  It honors veterans of 6 different wars:

                                               American Revolution
                                               The War of 1812
                                               The Mexican War
                                               The Civil War
                                               The Spanish-American War
                                               World War I
          
Wood made full scale drawings of the work to use as templates and two of the drawings were on display.  He had used his sister as the female figure in "American Goth" so he used his sister again as the model of the center figure in the stained glass window titled "Republic".

Revolutionary War Solider
96 1/2 X 42 1/2

WW1  Solider
96 1/2 X 42 1/2 inches

Other artist lithographs, were also on view. These artists are considered part of the Regionalist movement and most of them were from the Midwest.  These artists showed the farmers plight, hard working folks and socially related themes. Below are a few of these  artists whose work was on display.

Thomas Benton,  Neosho MO
                                    Slow Train Through Arkansas - 1941
                                    Missouri Farmyard - 1936
                                    The Bull - 1950

John Bloom, DeWitt Iowa
                                    Shocking Oats - 1986
                                    Watering - 1984
                                    Picking Corn - 1988
                                    Cattle Loading - 1986

Jackson Lee Nesbitt, McAlester OK
                                     Water Place - 1939
                                     November Evening - 1939

Bernard Steflen, Neodesha, KS 
                                   Cows In Kansas (colored print) - ?

Grant Wood, Anamosa Iowa
                                  Wild Flowers - 1938
                                  Tame Flowers - 1938
                                  Fruits - 1938
                                  Vegetales - 1938
                                  In The Spring - 1939
                                  Fertility - 1939
                                 Seed Time And Harvest - 1937
               the pictures above were hand colored lithographs on Rives Paper
             
               the pictures below are lithographs
                                 Sultry Night - 1937
                                 Family Doctor - 1941
                                 Approaching Storm - 1941
                                 Midnight Alarm - 1939
                                 Shriner Quartet - 1939
                                 December Afternoon - 1941
                                 February - 1941
                                 March - 1941
                                 July - 1941
                  

Dear Readers, if you are interested, it is still possible to own a lithograph by Grant Wood or one of the other artists. They fall within various price ranges from up to the 6 or 5 figure range to a few lower in price as in the hundreds of dollars or some even lower.

Here are a couple of sites where one can find the lithographs of these esteemed artists.
                           
Artnet

Amazon

Ebay
                                      
Want to know more about lithography, click on the link below.


What is a lithography?