Art. Biography & Autobiography. History. Nonfiction. HTML:He claimed to be �??the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn�??t a single thing I�??ve done, or experienced,�?� said Grant Wood, �??that�??s been even the least bit exciting.�?�

Wood was one of America�??s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an �??almost mythical figure,�?� recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America�??s traditional values�??a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age.

In this major new biography of America�??s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . .

R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as �??the booboisie�?� of small-town America.

We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the �??manliest of men�?�); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four).

We see Wood�??s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work.

Here is Wood�??s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist�??s unfinished autobiography, his sister�??s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans�??s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a �??National Symbol.�?� It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America�??s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and �??hothouse aesthetes.�?�

Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: �??When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the mid