Grant Wood was an American painter best known as one of the leading figures of the American Regionalist movement, which rejected European modernism in favor of rural Midwestern subject matter. American Gothic (1930), showing a dour farmer and his wife before a Gothic Revival farmhouse, became one of the most parodied images in American culture — though Wood intended it as a celebration of Midwest solemnity and hard work, not a satire. He spent most of his career in Iowa, teaching at the University of Iowa, and insisted that great art must grow from a specific place and community.
