Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables

Mar 2–June 10, 2018

Painting of man holding a pitch fork and a woman in front of a house.
Painting of man holding a pitch fork and a woman in front of a house.

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930. Oil on composition board, 30 3⁄4 x 25 3⁄4 in. (78 x 65.3 cm). Art Institute of Chicago; Friends of American Art Collection 1930.934. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph courtesy Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY

Grant Wood's American Gothic—the double portrait of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and a woman commonly presumed to be his wife—is perhaps the most recognizable painting in 20th century American art, an indelible icon of Americana, and certainly Wood's most famous artwork. But Wood's career consists of far more than one single painting. Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables brings together the full range of his art, from his early Arts and Crafts decorative objects and Impressionist oils through his mature paintings, murals, and book illustrations. The exhibition reveals a complex, sophisticated artist whose image as a farmer-painter was as mythical as the fables he depicted in his art. Wood sought pictorially to fashion a world of harmony and prosperity that would answer America's need for reassurance at a time of economic and social upheaval occasioned by the Depression. Yet underneath its bucolic exterior, his art reflects the anxiety of being an artist and a deeply repressed homosexual in the Midwest in the 1930s. By depicting his subconscious anxieties through populist images of rural America, Wood crafted images that speak both to American identity and to the estrangement and isolation of modern life.

This exhibition is organized by Barbara Haskell, Curator, with Sarah Humphreville, Senior Curatorial Assistant.

Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables is sponsored by Bank of America.


Major foundation support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Major support is also provided by the Barbara Haskell American Fellows Legacy Fund.

Significant support is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston; The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts; and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Generous support is provided by John and Mary Pappajohn and the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

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Commissions and Impressionist Paintings

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Like many American artists of his generation, Grant Wood initially looked to Europe as the center of culture. He went abroad four times between 1920 and 1928 for a total of twenty-three months, primarily studying the work of the French Impressionists, whose loose brushwork he adopted in the first two decades of his career to paint what he later called “Europy-looking” subjects. His assimilation of the style served him well in Cedar Rapids. By the early 1920s, he had become the city’s leading artist, selling his paintings to its residents and executing commissions in a variety of styles according to each project’s needs. 

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Soldier in the War of 1812 (Cannoneer), 1927

Ink drawing of soldier in War of 1812
Ink drawing of soldier in War of 1812

Grant Wood (1812–1942), Soldier in the War of 1812 (Cannoneer), 1927. Ink and graphite on paper, 79 3⁄4 x 22 3⁄4 in. (202.6 x 57.8 cm). Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, City of Davenport Art Collection, Grant Wood Archive; museum purchase with funds provided by the Friends of Art Acquisition Fund 1965.8. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

In 1927 Wood was awarded a commission to create a stained-glass window for Cedar Rapids’ planned Veterans Memorial Building honoring America’s war dead. He spent a year methodically researching the uniforms soldiers wore in the country’s six wars to date and making to scale drawings of each figure such as this one. After the city approved his sketch in early 1928, Wood hired Emil Frei Art Glass, a St. Louis company with a branch in Munich, to execute his design in stained glass. That fall, Wood traveled to Germany to supervise production. The experience of working with the hard-edge shapes and smooth surfaces of the stained glass rekindled a delight in craftsmanly exactitude that he had abandoned in adopting the loose brushwork of Impressionism; this revelation proved instrumental to the development of his mature art.

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Painting of man holding a pitch fork and a woman in front of a house.
Painting of man holding a pitch fork and a woman in front of a house.

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930. Oil on composition board, 30 3⁄4 x 25 3⁄4 in. (78 x 65.3 cm). Art Institute of Chicago; Friends of American Art Collection 1930.934. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph courtesy Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY

Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.

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Exhibition Catalogue

This comprehensive study of Grant Wood provides new insight into the career of one of the key figures of twentieth-century American art. Exploring Wood’s oeuvre from a variety of perspectives, the catalogue presents the artist’s work in all of its subtle complexity and eschews the idea that Wood can be categorized simply as a Regionalist painter. 

The excerpt featured here includes a selection from Barbara Haskell’s overview essay as well as a preview of the plate section and illustrated chronology.

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Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

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In the News

“A new exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art reveals the complexities of the Iowa-born Wood.”
—The Wall Street Journal

"Feels right on time."
—The New Yorker

"Wood was much more than American Gothic."
—artnet

“As this exhibition demonstrates, he is an artist fated to be perpetually rediscovered.”
—The Washington Post

“Wood had altogether weirder, more singular ambitions than any of his modernist counterparts.”
—Artforum

“A fascinating retrospective.”
—WNYC

"This is no regionalist proponent of clean, country living but an artist of a much darker and more sensual vision, one for whom normalcy was delightfully perverse."
—The Art Newspaper

“It will be a surprise for people who think they know Grant Wood.”
—The New York Times

"The most extensive Grant Wood exhibition that's ever been mounted."
—CBS News

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

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