Creation
In 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed the Dibble House, a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style in Eldon, Iowa. Wood decided to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." He recruited his sister Nan (1899–1990) to model the woman, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th-century Americana. The man is modeled on Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The three-pronged hay fork is echoed in the stitching of the man's overalls, the Gothic window of the house and the structure of the man's face. Each element was painted separately; the models sat separately and never stood in front of the house.
Read more about this topic: American Gothic
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist’s work. The meaning of art in our time flows from this function of self-creation. Art is the laboratory for making new men.”
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