Grant Wood Area history

Born February 13, 1891 to Hattie Weaver and Francis Maryville Wood, Grant DeVolson Wood grew up on a farm in a small town in Iowa.

Near the peak of the barn's roof, "1892" is inscribed, situating the scene in the first year of Wood's life.

The two young artists also assisted with the installation of exhibitions at the Cedar Rapids Art Association, originated in 1895 and located in the Carnegie Library.

After his father's death in 1901, the Wood family moved to Cedar Rapids.

Wood's interest in drawing and painting blossomed in the Cedar Rapids public schools, and he began submitting work to competitions in 1905, when he won third place in a national competition and resolved to become a professional artist.

In 1906, when he moved on to Washington High School, Wood threw himself into a variety of art-related opportunities available throughout the Cedar Rapids community.

In 1913, he moved to Chicago, taking night classes at the Art Institute while making jewelry to earn a living, first with Kalo Silversmithing, and then in his own small shop, Volund Craft Shop.

In 1916, he opened the “Wolund,” a silversmith shop with his friend Christoper Hago in Park Ridge.

In 1917, Grant enlisted in the Army in order to provide income for the family, and traveled to Washington to do camouflage work, remaining there until the war was over.

The existing building was built in 1919 - a near clone of an adjacent building built eight years earlier.

In 1920, Grant and Marvin Cone, his high school friend, traveled to France for the summer.

At a demonstration of a student project - a 150-foot long frieze entitled Imagination Isles (1921), presented to the school in the dramatic manner of 19th century panoramas - Wood's narration implied his absorption of modernist ideas.

Any tour of Grant Wood-related sites in Iowa would be woefully incomplete without a visit to the Cherry Building in Cedar Rapids, where Wood, in 1925, had his first big commission as an artist.

In the summer of 1926, Wood returned to Paris for his exhibition, but the show did not launch his career as he had hoped it would.

In 1927, his works acquired German influence.

Wood’s 1928 trip to Munich gave him time to explore the city’s great museums, where he closely studied the paintings of Hans Memling and other northern European artists of the late 15th and 16th centuries.

When he arrived back in Iowa in 1929, on a trip to Eldon, he saw a small house in a field with a unique Gothic window, which impressed him.

The 1930’s were a professional building stage for Grant Wood, with Stone City in progress, and Arnold (Pyle) Comes of Age winning the sweepstakes at the Iowa State Fair.

Shahn’s painting The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931–32) is a bitter comment on the outcome of the famous case in which two Italian anarchists were condemned to death in a politically motivated trial.

Another well-known painting by him is Daughters of Revolution (1932), a satirical portrait of three unattractive old women who appear smugly satisfied with their American Revolutionary ancestry.

In 1934 Wood was made assistant professor of fine arts at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Wood moved in to 1142 in 1935 after having commuted from his 5 Turner Alley Studio to Iowa City for a year.

When a new administration was installed in 1936, he was cast as a "reactionary" by the new department chair, 30-year old Lester Longman, an historian of medieval Spanish art who preferred "internationalist" avant-garde modernism.

Wood created many lithographs while at the house, including those for the Associated American Artists, and he featured 1142 in Parson Weems' Fable in 1939.

In 1941, Wood was given a new title and studio and was removed from Longman's supervision.

He died months later, in February on 1942, just short of his fifty-first birthday.

Local lawyer, Jim Hayes, purchased 1142 in 1975.

In his 1987 book Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture , James Dennis provides a remarkable explication of Stone City : the bulbous trees, the modern bridge built over the Wapsipinicon River, the curlicuing roadways, descending sun, and toyland buildings in a churchless farm town.

Hayes hosted the first Grant Wood Symposium on May 7, 2009 at 1142.

In 2011, the first Grant Wood Fellow was hosted in the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

In 2015, the Grant Wood Art Colony joined the Provost’s Office of Community Engagement.