Fertility

 

Grant Wood

  1891 - 1942

1939  

lithograph 

8 15/16 x 11 7/8" image 

pencil, lower right 

250 

 

Cole 15 

antique-white Rives wove 

published 

Associated American Artists (AAA) 

JEJA101 

SOLD

"Fertility" is one of Grant Wood's signature lithographs and features a Midwestern farm with its large cow barn, farmhouse and corn crop. The Dubuque Museum of Art entry for this work says it well: "With its burgeoning barn and densely packed cornfield, this stylized farmscape is a testimonial to the agricultural productivity of Iowa. However, Grant Wood also suggests that Regionalism is a fertile philosophy for artistic growth, as evidenced by the numerous references to Gothic Architecture: the farmhouse is the same Carpenter Gothic house from American Gothic, the barn's Gothic vault, and the corn leaves form arched tiers reminiscent of a Gothic church. The development of the Gothic arch provided a boon to European architecture and competition between rival cities led to magnificent edifices that stand to this day. Similarly, as Wood proposed in his essay Revolt Against the City, "the hope of a native American art lives in the development of regional art centers and the competition between them."