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Chan Im 3-18-11 Art 1 Project

In 1891, Grant Wood was born on a farm near Anamosa, Iowa, a rural town with a population of about 2,000. After the death of her husband in 1901, Hattie Wood relocated with her four children to her parent’s house in Cedar Rapids. Removed from their idyllic family farm, Grant Wood and his siblings quickly accustomed to the new, urban setting that surrounded them. =Grant Wood showed an interest in art at a very early age. He often drew pictures with burnt sticks his mother gave him from her stove. Even though Grant drew pictures every chance he got, everyone thought he’d grow up to be a farmer like his father. Grant seemed to enjoy his farm chores, and had his own goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys. When Grant was ten years old, a very sad thing happened to him. His father died, and his mother found that it was too difficult to keep the farm running. She decided to move her family to the nearby city of Cedar Rapids. It was a hard move for Grant. He missed his farm pets, and felt out of place at the new city school. Some kids even made fun of him. Because of his good sense of humor and his talent for drawing, things eventually got better for Grant. = ==== Grant Wood was an excellent artist at a young age. When he was 14, he won third prize in a national contest for a crayon drawing of oak leaves. His formal art education included two summers with Ernest Batchelder at the School of Design and Handicraft in Minneapolis and three years of occasional night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. In October 1920, Grant Wood went on a trip to Europe. In 1923 Wood left teaching high school art to visit Europe again, where he studied at the Academie Julien in Paris. While in Europe, he experimented with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. His exposure to modern European art helped him discover a different form of art. ==== ==== One day, while Grant was looking for something interesting to paint, he discovered a farmhouse with an unusual window. The arch-shaped window was based on a style of European architecture from the Middle Ages called Gothic architecture. Grant liked the contrast of a European window on an American farmhouse. After he made sketches of the house, Grant looked for just the right people to go with it. He thought his family dentist and his own sister, Nan, would be perfect for the farmer and his daughter. Grant entered American Gothic in a big show at the Art Institute of Chicago, and won the third place prize. People all over America loved the newspaper pictures they saw of it. Soon, Grant’s paintings started to become very popular. One reason for this was that many people felt Grant’s art was easier to understand than a lot of the new modern art being done. Another reason Grant’s paintings became so popular was that they came along during a rough time in history known as the Great Depression. ==== ﻿ Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa's School of Art from 1934. 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. 