Shop art print and framed art American Gothic by Grant Wood

American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the Friends of American Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood was inspired by an unusual house designed in the style of medieval Europe, whose details caught his eye, in particular the presence of an upper window with three pointed arches, similar to those in Gothic churches. He wanted to paint it with "the kind of people [he] imagined would live in this house". The painting shows a peasant standing next to his unmarried daughter in front of a wooden house. The way the figures are painted, in the frontal foreground, evokes a style of photography typical of nineteenth-century America. On the left, the woman is dressed in a black dress with a white claudine collar and a brown blouse with a colonial print imitating the traditional American style of the period. Her outfit is embellished with a brooch adorned with an orange cameo. Her pursed mouth and the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth reveal a certain bitterness. She looks sombre and worried. On the right, an older man stares straight ahead through round glasses. His long face, advanced baldness, circumflex eyebrows and thin mouth give him an austere air. He wears a collarless shirt with thin green stripes, denim overalls under a black jacket and brandishes a three-pronged pitchfork stiffly in his right hand. Over his left shoulder, a red barn is partially visible. In the centre of the painting stands the famous house, with its high neo-Gothic window over a [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the modern period. It belongs to the realism style.

 

« American Gothic » is kept at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA.

 

Find the full description of American Gothic by Grant Wood on Wikipedia.