Grant Wood (February 13, 1891 – February 12, 1942)

American Gothic

1930

I must make an admission: I hated Wood as a child: I thought American Gothic was the most kitschy piece of art in the American pantheon. Now I think it's marvelous. For one, there is something extraordinarily American about Wood's work, more so, I would say, than any other painter in the States. Furthermore, what I viewed as a flatness and a sort of dull Primitivism, I now view as a complex interplay of elements and perspectives. And I believe paintings, such as Spring in the Country, were a non-Abstractionist solution to the evolution of art in the 20th century.