American Gothic
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Where to see it
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
About the painting
American Gothic is a 1930 oil painting on beaverboard by the American Regionalist artist Grant Wood, depicting a Midwestern farmer and his daughter standing in front of their Carpenter Gothic style home. It is one of the most famous American paintings of the 20th century and is frequently referenced in popular culture.
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Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa, along with "the kind of people [he] fancied should live in that house".
The figures were modeled after Wood's sister Nan Wood Graham and Byron McKeeby, the Wood family's dentist. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 20th-century rural Americana while the man is adorned in overalls covered by a suit jacket and carries a pitchfork. The plants on the porch of the house are mother-in-law's tongue and beefsteak begonia, which also appear in Wood's 1929 portrait of his mother, Woman with Plants.
From 2016 to 2017, the painting was displayed in Paris at the Musée de l'Orangerie and in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, in its first showings outside the United States. The painting is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
Similar works
Image: Grant Wood; Wikimedia Commons · public domain