Grant Wood Art Colony National Advisory Board Member R. Tripp Evans explores the complex matrix of personal and stylistic influences behind Wood’s iconic ‘American Gothic’ (1930) – a painting that is, at once, one of the most recognizable and enigmatic images in American art. His talk, entitled "Grant Wood’s American Gothic, unvarnished," will be held on Friday, March 17, 2017, from 6.30 — 7.30pm.

When American Gothic debuted at the Art Institute of Chicago in the autumn of 1930, critics from New York to Berlin hailed the work as a “national portrait.” Some championed the image as a tribute to a lost agrarian age, while others perceived in it a wicked satire of American provincialism. Decidedly more gothic than it is American, the painting conjures the ghosts and family secrets of Wood’s own past, casting each of its haunting figures in multiple roles. Delve deep into the significance and origins of American Gothic at this talk by the expert on this seminal painting.

Art historian R. Tripp Evans is the award-winning author of Grant Wood: A Life (2010) and professor of art history at Wheaton College, Massachusetts.

More information about this event can be found on the Royal Academy's website.