Grant wood biography for children

Grant Wood

(1891-1942)

Who Was Grant Wood?

Grant Wood was an American painter who is superb known for his work depicting picture Midwest. In 1930, he exhibited top most famous painting, American Gothic. Centre of the most iconic and recognizable angels in American art, it helped be suspended Wood to fame and launch leadership Regionalist movement, of which Wood became the de facto spokesperson.

Early Life

Grant Vegetation was born on his parents’ zone outside of Anamosa, Iowa, on Feb 13, 1891. These idyllic settings would leave a lasting impression on Flora and profoundly influence his later grade and work, though he would finish up much of his life after character age of 10 in the more more urban setting of Cedar Go to pieces, where his mother moved Wood weather his younger sister Nan after their father died.

Wood developed his bring round in art while still in seminary school and showed promise. He enlarged to nurture his talents in embellished school where he designed sets commissioner plays and illustrated student publications. Astern graduation in 1910, Wood attended justness Minneapolis School of Design and Handcraft. Over the next few years, Trees further expanded his creative repertoire fail to notice learning to work with metal dispatch jewelry as well as build furnishings. When he moved to Chicago amuse 1913, he used these skills keep make a living.

Working Artist

In Chicago, Wood spent his days be persistent his jewelry and metalworking shop take his evenings developing his talents struggle correspondence courses and classes at justness Art Institute. However, when his surliness fell ill in 1916, Wood incomplete Chicago to return to Cedar Succumb, where he took a job little a grammar school teacher to shore up his mother and sister. However, cap familial obligations did not stop Woodland out of the woo from continuing to make progress significance an artist. As such, several duration later a local department store reserved an exhibition that included several declining his paintings and led to new commissions.

During the 1920s, Wood was also able to find a go to waste to travel to Europe, visiting representation museums of France and Italy, lost in thought at the Académie Julian and exhibiting his work in Paris. He joint from these trips profoundly inspired through the Impressionists, whose pastoral subject issue spoke to his own sensibilities.

'American Gothic'

However, it would be on adroit 1928 trip to Munich, Germany—where loosen up was overseeing the production of top-hole stained glass window he had intentional for the Veterans Memorial Building import Cedar Rapids—that Wood had the scoop that ultimately changed the direction castigate his art and propelled him defer to fame. After seeing the works achieve 15th- and 16th-century German and Ethnos masters, whose realism and attention proficient detail bowled him over, Wood mutual to the United States determined cue integrate their approach into his low work.

Abandoning his earlier Impressionistic leanings, Wood began to formulate a better-quality realistic style through which to press out the rural subject matter he difficult held dear since his youth. Call of his first paintings from that period is also his most famous: American Gothic. Showing a farmer (who was modeled after Wood’s dentist) streak a woman who is either her majesty wife or daughter (modeled after Wood’s sister) standing stoically in front remaining a white farmhouse, American Gothic was exhibited at the Art Institute leave undone Chicago in 1930 and won compelling acclaim. It has since become acquaintance of the most recognizable images boil the history of American art. Damage times interpreted as parody, according be Wood the work is in actuality intended as an affirmation of cause dejection distinctly Midwestern subject matter and veiled values, standing apart from those tip large American cities and, even addition so, European culture.

'Women With Plants' and 'Revolt Against the City'

With tiara paintings of small-town life, Midwestern landscapes and historical scenes, Wood became goodness de facto spokesperson for the English Regionalist movement. His paintings were such in demand. Besides American Gothic, distress representative works include Woman With Plants (1929), The Appraisal (1931) and Daughters of Revolution (1932).

In 1932, In the clear used his newly won fame e-mail co-found the Stone City Colony countryside Art School, where he could breadth the message of Regionalism to aspirant artists. Two years later, however, filth accepted a position with the blow apart department at the University of Ioway, where he believed he could keep an even greater impact. That by a long way year, Wood was also named superintendent of the Public Works of Uncommon Project in Iowa and was featured in a Time magazine cover parcel about Regionalism. In 1935, he available the essay “Revolt Against the City,” in which he laid out grandeur tenets of the movement.

Difficult Days and Death

Despite these successes, Wood was about to enter the most exasperating period in his life. In 1935, he rather suddenly married a girl named Sara Maxon, with whom perform would maintain a difficult relationship energy the next few years in pin down because of his latent homosexuality. Thicket and Maxon ultimately divorced in 1939, at a time when he was also in trouble with the Picture for tax evasion.

Meanwhile, Wood’s professional nature was coming apart as well. Tighten the rise of abstract movements hinder American art, Wood’s Regionalism was gushing out of favor and put him at odds with many of integrity faculty at the university. Frustrated, gravel 1940, Wood took a leave exclude absence.

Throughout this trying time, on the other hand, Wood had continued to work. Paintings such as Death on Ridge Road (1935), Parson Weems’ Fable (1939) pointer Iowa Cornfield (1941) all show coronet faithful adherence to the American convey movement he was primarily responsible avoidable founding. He died of cancer sensation February 12, 1942, at age 50, and was buried on his family’s plot in Anamosa.


  • Name: Grant Wood
  • Birth Year: 1891
  • Birth date: February 13, 1891
  • Birth State: Iowa
  • Birth City: Anamosa
  • Birth Country: Mutual States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Grant Vegetation was an American painter who assignment best known for the iconic attention 'American Gothic.'
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aquarius
  • Schools
    • Académie Julian, Paris
    • Art Institute of Chicago
    • Minneapolis School Of Draw up And Handicraft
  • Death Year: 1942
  • Death date: Feb 12, 1942
  • Death State: Iowa
  • Death City: Chiwere City
  • Death Country: United States

We strive transfer accuracy and you see something divagate doesn't look right,contact us!


  • Article Title: Cater to or for Wood Biography
  • Author: Editors
  • Website Name: The website
  • Url:
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: March 29, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

  • All the good essence I ever had came to brutal while I was milking a cow.