Cedar Rapids native, Grant Wood, is one of the most prominent artists associated with the American Regionalism movement. The work from that era (1930s-1940s) includes paintings, murals, lithographs and illustrations depicting rural and small town America, particularly life in the Midwest. American Gothic (pictured) is both Wood’s and the movement’s most famous piece. Wood took his inspiration from a gothic-revival cottage in Eldon, IA.
EARLY LIFE & TRAINING
Wood and his family moved to Cedar Rapids when he was 10 years old. He went on to graduate from Washington High School, study in Minneapolis, Europe and Chicago and win third prize in the Art Institue of Chicago’s 43rd Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture for American Gothic. *
EXPERIENCE THE SPACE
Visit Wood’s home and the studio in which he painted American Gothic. Grant Wood Studio and Visitor Center’s interior space was designed and built by Wood himself and is now operated by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.
SEE THE ART
The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art has the largest collection of Wood’s art in the country. The Veterans Memorial Building in downtown Cedar Rapids features Wood’s Memorial Window, a 20x24-foot work of stained-glass. Brucemore Mansion displays Wood’s plaster relief walls in the Sleeping Porch. And as a freemason, Wood created The First Three Degrees of Freemasonry now displayed at Iowa Masonic Lodge & Museum Grand Lodge of Iowa. Discover even more at the Douglas Mansion, Cedar Rapids Area Geneaology Library and Coe College.
SELFIE STOPS
Grab fun Wood-inspired selfies at the American Gothic Barn near Pallisades Kepler State Park on Highway 30, the Wood-themed northbound I-380 rest area just south of the city, the American Gothic Cottage in Eldon, IA and American Gothic sculptures located throughout Cedar Rapids.
* Photo of Grant Wood with one of his paintings, courtesy of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art
