Grant Wood
Encyclopedia
Grant DeVolson Wood was an American
painter
, born four miles east of Anamosa
, Iowa
. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic
, an iconic image of the 20th century.
after his father died in 1901. Soon thereafter he began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating from Washington High School
, Wood enrolled in an art school in Minneapolis in 1910, and returned a year later to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1913 he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and did some work as a silversmith
.
From 1920 to 1928 he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially impressionism
and post-impressionism
. But it was the work of the fifteenth-century Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck
that influenced him to take on the clarity of this new technique and to incorporate it in his new works. From 1924 to 1935 Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house that he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up himself). In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony
near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression
. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country on the topic.
Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa
's School of Art
from 1934 to 1941. During that time, he supervised mural painting projects, mentored students, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the University's cultural community. A closeted
homosexual, he was fired because of a relationship with his personal secretary. On February 12, 1942, one day before his 51st birthday, Wood died at the university hospital of liver cancer
.
When Wood died, his estate went to his sister, Nan Wood Graham
, the woman portrayed in American Gothic
. When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Wood's personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum
in Davenport, Iowa
.
, ink
, charcoal
, ceramic
s, metal
, wood
and found objects.
Throughout his life he hired out his talents to many Iowa-based businesses as a steady source of income. This included painting advertisements, sketching rooms of a mortuary house for promotional flyers and, in one case, designing the corn-themed decor (including chandelier
) for the dining room of a hotel. In addition, his 1928 trip to Munich
was to oversee the making of the stained-glass windows he had designed for a Veterans Memorial Building
in Cedar Rapids. The window was damaged during the 2008 flood and it is currently in the process of restoration. He again returned to Cedar Rapids to teach Junior High students after serving in the army as a camouflage painter.
that was primarily situated in the Midwest, and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction.
Wood was one of three artists most associated with the movement. The others, John Steuart Curry
and Thomas Hart Benton
, returned to the Midwest in the 1930s due to Wood's encouragement and assistance with locating teaching positions for them at colleges in Wisconsin and Kansas, respectively. Along with Benton, Curry, and other Regionalist
artists, Wood's work was marketed through Associated American Artists
in New York for many years. Wood is considered the patron artist of Cedar Rapids
, and his childhood country school is depicted on the 2004 Iowa State Quarter.
, which is also one of the most famous paintings in American art, and one of the few images to reach the status of universally recognised cultural icon, comparable to Leonardo da Vinci
's Mona Lisa
and Edvard Munch
's The Scream
.
It was first exhibited in 1930 at the Art Institute of Chicago
, where it is still located. It was given a $300 prize and made news stories country-wide, bringing Wood immediate recognition. Since then, it has been borrowed and satirised endlessly for advertisements and cartoons.
Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein
and Christopher Morley
, assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of repression and narrow-mindedness of rural small-town life. It was seen as part of the trend toward increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson
's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio
, Sinclair Lewis
' 1920 Main Street
, and Carl Van Vechten
's The Tattooed Countess in literature. Wood rejected this reading of it. With the onset of the Great Depression
, it came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. Another reading is that it is an ambiguous fusion of reverence and parody.
Wood's inspiration came from Eldon
, southern Iowa, where a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival
style with an upper window in the shape of a medieval pointed arch, provided the background and also the painting's title. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter, figures modeled by the artist's dentist and sister, Nan (1900–1990). The dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) was from Cedar Rapids, Iowa
. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana
and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man's pitchfork
symbolizing hard labor.
The compositional severity and detailed technique derive from Northern Renaissance paintings, which Grant had looked at during three visits to Europe; after this he became increasingly aware of the Midwest's own legacy, which also informs the work. It is a key image of Regionalism
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, born four miles east of Anamosa
Anamosa, Iowa
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,494 people, 1,750 households, and 1,135 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,453.4 people per square mile . There were 1,884 housing units at an average density of 841.3 per square mile...
, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic
American Gothic
American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that...
, an iconic image of the 20th century.
Life and career
His family moved to Cedar RapidsCedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and east of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city...
after his father died in 1901. Soon thereafter he began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating from Washington High School
Washington High School (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)
Washington High School is a public high school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa-The First Washington High School:Construction began on the first Washington in 1855 on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Fifth Street S.E. It was a three-story brick building with a white belfry, and it was the largest public school...
, Wood enrolled in an art school in Minneapolis in 1910, and returned a year later to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1913 he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and did some work as a silversmith
Silversmith
A silversmith is a craftsperson who makes objects from silver or gold. The terms 'silversmith' and 'goldsmith' are not synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product varies greatly as does the scale of objects created.Silversmithing is the...
.
From 1920 to 1928 he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and post-impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
. But it was the work of the fifteenth-century Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
that influenced him to take on the clarity of this new technique and to incorporate it in his new works. From 1924 to 1935 Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house that he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up himself). In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony
Stone City art colony
The Stone City Art Colony was an art colony founded by Edward Rowan, Adrian Dornbush, and Grant Wood. The colony gathered on the John A. Green Estate in Stone City, Iowa during the summers of 1932 and 1933.- History :...
near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country on the topic.
Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
's School of Art
University of Iowa School of Art and Art History
The University of Iowa School of Art and Art History is a school of the University of Iowa located in Iowa City, IA which awards undergraduate and graduate degrees in Art and Art history...
from 1934 to 1941. During that time, he supervised mural painting projects, mentored students, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the University's cultural community. A closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
homosexual, he was fired because of a relationship with his personal secretary. On February 12, 1942, one day before his 51st birthday, Wood died at the university hospital of liver cancer
Liver cancer
Liver tumors or hepatic tumors are tumors or growths on or in the liver . Several distinct types of tumors can develop in the liver because the liver is made up of various cell types. These growths can be benign or malignant...
.
When Wood died, his estate went to his sister, Nan Wood Graham
Nan Wood Graham
Nan Wood Graham was the sister of painter Grant Wood. She is best known as the model for the woman in her brother's most famous painting, American Gothic. She married Edward Graham, a real estate investor; and spent the rest of her life as a historian for her brother's work. She died at a nursing...
, the woman portrayed in American Gothic
American Gothic
American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that...
. When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Wood's personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum
Figge Art Museum
The Figge Art Museum is an art museum in Davenport, Iowa. The Figge, as it is commonly known, has an encyclopedic collection and serves as the major art museum for the eastern Iowa and western Illinois region...
in Davenport, Iowa
Davenport, Iowa
Davenport is a city located along the Mississippi River in Scott County, Iowa, United States. Davenport is the county seat of and largest city in Scott County. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk...
.
Work
Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although he is best known for his paintings, he worked in a large number of media, including lithographyLithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
, ink
Ink
Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...
, charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...
, ceramic
Ceramic
A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...
s, metal
Metal
A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...
, wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
and found objects.
Throughout his life he hired out his talents to many Iowa-based businesses as a steady source of income. This included painting advertisements, sketching rooms of a mortuary house for promotional flyers and, in one case, designing the corn-themed decor (including chandelier
Chandelier
A chandelier is a branched decorative ceiling-mounted light fixture with two or more arms bearing lights. Chandeliers are often ornate, containing dozens of lamps and complex arrays of glass or crystal prisms to illuminate a room with refracted light...
) for the dining room of a hotel. In addition, his 1928 trip to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
was to oversee the making of the stained-glass windows he had designed for a Veterans Memorial Building
Veterans Memorial Building (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)
The Veteran’s Memorial Building is located on May’s Island in the middle of the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, United States. It, along with the Linn County Courthouse, is a contributing property to the May's Island Historic District that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places...
in Cedar Rapids. The window was damaged during the 2008 flood and it is currently in the process of restoration. He again returned to Cedar Rapids to teach Junior High students after serving in the army as a camouflage painter.
Regionalism
Wood is most closely associated with the American movement of RegionalismRegionalism (art)
Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that was popular during the 1930s. The artistic focus was from artists who shunned city life, and rapidly developing technological advances, to create scenes of rural life...
that was primarily situated in the Midwest, and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction.
Wood was one of three artists most associated with the movement. The others, John Steuart Curry
John Steuart Curry
John Steuart Curry was an American painter whose career spanned from 1924 until his death. He was noted for his paintings depicting life in his home state, Kansas...
and Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton (painter)
Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States...
, returned to the Midwest in the 1930s due to Wood's encouragement and assistance with locating teaching positions for them at colleges in Wisconsin and Kansas, respectively. Along with Benton, Curry, and other Regionalist
Regionalism (art)
Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that was popular during the 1930s. The artistic focus was from artists who shunned city life, and rapidly developing technological advances, to create scenes of rural life...
artists, Wood's work was marketed through Associated American Artists
Associated American Artists
Associated American Artists is an art gallery and business established in 1934 in New York City. The gallery marketed art to the middle classes, first in the form of affordable prints and later in home furnishings and accessories, and played a significant role in the growth of art as an...
in New York for many years. Wood is considered the patron artist of Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and east of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city...
, and his childhood country school is depicted on the 2004 Iowa State Quarter.
American Gothic
Wood's best known work is his 1930 painting American GothicAmerican Gothic
American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that...
, which is also one of the most famous paintings in American art, and one of the few images to reach the status of universally recognised cultural icon, comparable to Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...
and Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
's The Scream
The Scream
Scream is the title of Expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky...
.
It was first exhibited in 1930 at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, where it is still located. It was given a $300 prize and made news stories country-wide, bringing Wood immediate recognition. Since then, it has been borrowed and satirised endlessly for advertisements and cartoons.
Art critics who had favorable opinions about the painting, such as Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and Christopher Morley
Christopher Morley
Christopher Morley was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.-Biography:Christopher Morley was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania...
, assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of repression and narrow-mindedness of rural small-town life. It was seen as part of the trend toward increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio
Winesburg, Ohio (novel)
Winesburg, Ohio is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
' 1920 Main Street
Main Street (novel)
- Plot summary :Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, reared in the metropolis of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is a small-town boy at heart....
, and Carl Van Vechten
Carl van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.-Biography:...
's The Tattooed Countess in literature. Wood rejected this reading of it. With the onset of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, it came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. Another reading is that it is an ambiguous fusion of reverence and parody.
Wood's inspiration came from Eldon
Eldon
-Places:* Eldon, County Durham, England* Eldon Lane, County Durham, England* Old Eldon, County Durham, England* Eldon Hill, Derbyshire, England* Eldon, Iowa, USA* Eldon, Missouri, USA* Eldon Township, Benson County, North Dakota, USA* Eldon, Oklahoma, USA...
, southern Iowa, where a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival
Carpenter Gothic
Carpenter Gothic, also sometimes called Carpenter's Gothic, and Rural Gothic, is a North American architectural style-designation for an application of Gothic Revival architectural detailing and picturesque massing applied to wooden structures built by house-carpenters...
style with an upper window in the shape of a medieval pointed arch, provided the background and also the painting's title. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter, figures modeled by the artist's dentist and sister, Nan (1900–1990). The dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) was from Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and east of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city...
. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana
Americana
Americana refers to artifacts, or a collection of artifacts, related to the history, geography, folklore and cultural heritage of the United States. Many kinds of material fall within the definition of Americana: paintings, prints and drawings; license plates or entire vehicles, household objects,...
and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man's pitchfork
Pitchfork
A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and long, thin, widely separated pointed tines used to lift and pitch loose material, such as hay, leaves, grapes, dung or other agricultural materials. Pitchforks typically have two or three tines...
symbolizing hard labor.
The compositional severity and detailed technique derive from Northern Renaissance paintings, which Grant had looked at during three visits to Europe; after this he became increasingly aware of the Midwest's own legacy, which also informs the work. It is a key image of Regionalism
American scene painting
American scene painting refers to a naturalist style of painting and other works of art of the 1920s through the 1950s in the United States. American scene painting is also known as Regionalism....
.
Paintings
- Adolescence (1933)
- American Gothic (1930)
- Appraisal (1931)
- Arbor Day (1932)
- Arnold Comes of Age (1930)
- Birthplace of Herbert Hoover (1931)
- Boy Milking Cow (1932)
- Daughters of Revolution (1932)
- Death on Ridge Road (1935)
- Dinner for Threshers (1934)
- Fall Plowing (1931)
- Haying (1939)
- Iowa Cornfield (1941)
- January (1940)
- The Little Chapel Chancelade (1926)
- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931)
- Near Sundown (1933)
- New Road (1939)
- Parson Weems' Fable (1939)
- Plaid Sweater (1931)
- Portrait of Nan (1933)
- Return from Bohemia (1935)
- Seedtime and Harvest (1937)
- Self-Portrait (1932)
- Spotted Man (1924)
- Stone City, Iowa (1930)
- Sultry Night (1937)
- Woman with Plants (1929)
- Young Corn (1931)
Writing
- Wood, Grant. "Art in the Daily Life of the Child." Rural America, March 1940, 7-9.
- ———. Revolt against the City. Iowa City: Clio Press, 1935.
Secondary literature
- Corn, Wanda M. Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision. New Haven: Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Yale University Press, 1983.
- Crowe, David. "Illustration as Interpretation: Grant Wood's 'New Deal' Reading of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street." In Sinclair Lewis at 100: Papers Presented at a Centennial Conference, edited by Michael Connaughton, 95-111. St. Cloud, MN: St. Cloud State University, 1985.
- Czestochowski, Joseph S. John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood: A Portrait of Rural America. Columbia: University of Missouri Press and Cedar Rapids Art Association, 1981.
- DeLong, Lea Rosson. Grant Wood's Main Street: Art, Literature and the American Midwest. Ames: Exhibition catalog from the Brunnier Art Museum at Iowa State University, 2004.
- ———. When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow: Grant Wood and Christian Petersen Murals. Ames: Exhibition catalog from the Brunnier Art Museum at Iowa State University, 2006.
- Dennis, James M. Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture. New York: Viking Press, 1975.
- ———. Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
- Evans, R. Tripp. Grant Wood [A Life]. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
- Graham, Nan Wood, John Zug, and Julie Jensen McDonald. My Brother, Grant Wood. Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1993.
- Green, Edwin B. A Grant Wood Sampler, January Issue of the Palimpsest. Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1972.
- Haven, Janet. "Going Back to Iowa: The World of Grant Wood." MA project in conjunction with the Museum for American Studies of the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia, available online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA98/haven/wood/home.html, 1998.
- Hoving, Thomas. American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood's American Masterpiece. New York: Chamberlain Brothers, 2005.
- Milosch, Jane C., ed. Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of American Gothic. Cedar Rapids and New York: Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and Prestel, 2005.
- Seery, John E. "Grant Wood's Political Gothic." Theory & Event 2, no. 1 (1998).
- Taylor, Sue. "Grant Wood's Family Album." American Art 19, no. 2 (2005): 48-67.
External links
- Cedar Rapids Museum of Art biography of Grant Wood
- Grant Wood on artcyclopedia.com
- Grant Wood and Frank Lloyd Wright Compared
- American Classic: Grant Wood and the meaning of his art
- Grant Wood's Studio
- Ten Dreams Galleries
- Ely's Web Site (The Stone City Web Site)
- Grant Wood Gallery at MuseumSyndicate
- The Sioux City Corn Room mural, Sioux City Art Center
- Grant Wood Papers Online at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art