CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - Many people know this famous painting: American Gothic. You might know about the Iowa home that inspired it... and the Iowan who painted it. But you almost didn’t.
“His life here caused him to be written out of art history, and that’s why people know American Gothic but don’t know the artist behind it,” said Maura Pilcher, Grant Wood Art Colony Executive Director.
Grant Wood was born in Anamosa in 1891.
After his father died, his mother moved him and his sister to Cedar Rapids when Wood was 10 years old.
“He’s recognized as a really accomplished and talented artist even in high school,” said Sean Ulmer, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art Executive Director.
After high school, Wood bounces around Minneapolis and Chicago before moving back to Cedar Rapids, where he receives immense support from the community.
“They bought his paintings, they commissioned works of art from him, and he continues to be making art and and he’s really beloved by the city of Cedar Rapids,” said Ulmer.
While painting, he’s also teaching in the Cedar Rapids Community School District.
That’s when he meets the Turner family. They offered him a space above their funeral home. Converted into a home and studio, he’s able to focus on his art.
It’s in this space Wood creates many of his works, including the painting that would propel Wood into stardom in the art world: American Gothic.
“That has become so Translatable to so many different kinds of people and cultural moments,” said Joni Kinsey, University of Iowa Professor Emeritus of Art History.
But as Woods’ fame grew, so did the depths of the Great Depression.
The federal government starts the Public Works of Art Project, and Wood is asked to lead the Iowa Office.
The University of Iowa offers to house Wood there and hires him to teach. But that’s when a rift starts.
“The scholars, the educated, the PhDs, were still in charge of the school and in charge of the curriculum and the teaching. And then here’s this guy that comes along, and he only has a high school degree. Who is this guy? Why should we treat him with any respect?“ said Pilcher.
Wood is not happy. But in that misery, he finds solace in his home at 1142 East Court Street in Iowa City.
“He referred to it as his greatest work of art because he really was able to create a safe haven for himself. He ends up doing a lot of his sketches in his backyard. He creates a community around him,” said Pilcher.
The tension grows between Wood and scholars at the University, all the way to his death in 1942. Just one day before his 51st birthday.
After his death, those in the art world worked to erase Wood’s legacy.
“Grant Wood’s memory was successfully erased. When I first started at the University of Iowa and for many years afterwards, virtually no one, even in the art department, knew that he had taught in our department or that he had taught at the University of Iowa, or that he had lived in Iowa City,” said Kinsey.
For years, Wood was left out of the conversation of art history.
Until Jim Hayes bought Wood’s house in 1975.
“When he left, the university just never said a word about him for 70 years. Never said a word about him. Not a word,” said Hayes.
A lawyer, Hayes’s interest in history drove him to start the Grant Wood Art Colony in 2009.
“We bring artists, three artists every year, from across the world. They come, they teach one class per semester. But what is really interesting and how we’re hearkening back to what Grant Wood’s opportunities look like by the Turner family is that we give them time and space to make work,” said Pilcher.
The Colony also has another goal...
“We have decided to cover all of Grant Wood’s work. We’re going to try to inventory everything he made,” said Ranelle Knight-Lueth, Grant Wood catalogue raisonné Project Manager.
There’s no set release date for the online Catalogue, but Knight-Lueth said they’re working to spare no details, so that history doesn’t repeat itself.
“Again, if we don’t do it, I’m afraid Grant Wood’s going to fall through the cracks,” she said.
What makes Woods’ work stand the test of time, experts said, is the same thing that makes America so diverse.
“America is made up of many different regions, many different areas, and they all have a part to play in America’s success story, and he firmly believed that Iowa was part of that story,” said Ulmer.
“He was making art that, when you look at it closely and learn about it, was saying some important things about the country, its history, individual people, the myths and values that we all share. And he has a lot to say,” said Kinsey.
Grant Wood. Speaking to We the People, from a quiet corner of Eastern Iowa.
To learn even more about Wood’s life, check out the accompanying podcast by clicking here.
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