John Steuart Curry– “Tragic Prelude” Mural depicting John Brown in Kansas
One of my favorite genres of art is that of American Regionalism. You can lump painters like Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry together as some of the better known names in this group. I am not particularly fond of the use of the word regionalist which seems to hint at some sort of narrow provincialism, a label that Eastern critics tried to pin on this Midwest-based movement of the 1930’s and 40’s. But these painters and others who have been branded as Regionalists were not sentimental or naive.
In fact they espoused views that were often more aligned with progressive and socialist ideals. Many of these artists were looking to make their work more accessible to the working class, something that they felt was lacking in the more elitist Modernist work of the time and simply used the landscape and people around them as the vehicle to convey these ideals. This gave the work an inclusive populist quality that is especially appealing to me. I like that their work is often simple to approach yet reveals so much more upon deeper inspection.
I have written about some of the more well known Regionalists such as Wood and Benton, as well as some of the lesser known names such as Alexander Hogue and Paul Sample but hope to shed some light in future posts on some of the more obscure names in this genre.
Redtree Times 