1930's
An American term, Regionalism refers to the work of a group of rural
artists, mostly from the Midwest, who came to prominance in the 1930's. Not
being part of a coordinated movement, regionalists often had an idiosyncratic
style or point of view. What they shared, among themselves and among other
American Scene painters,
was a humble, antimodernist style and a fondness for depicting everyday life.
However, their rural conservatism put them at odds with the urban and leftist
Social Realists of the same era. The three best-known regionalists were
Thomas Hart Benton,
John Steuart Curry, and
Grant Wood,
the painter of the best-known and one of the greatest works of
American art, American Gothic.