ART

Regionalism or American Scene painting is an American realist modern art movement that was popular from 1920s through the 1950s in the United States. The artistic focus was from artists who shunned city life, and rapidly developing technological advances, to create scenes of rural life. Regionalist style was at its height from 1930 to 1935, and is best known through the so-called "Regionalist Triumvirate" of Grant Wood in Iowa, Thomas Hart Benton in Missouri, and John Steuart Curry in Kansas. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Regionalist art was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland.

 

Much of American scene painting conveys a sense of nationalism and romanticism in depictions of everyday American life. During the 1930s, these artists documented and depicted American cities, small towns, and rural landscapes; some did so as a way to return to a simpler time away from industrialization whereas others sought to make a political statement and lent their art to revolutionary and radical causes. Representative artists include Thomas Hart Benton, Jim Turnbull, John Rogers Cox, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, Alexandre Hogue, Dale Nichols, Edna Reindel, Sanford Ross, and William S. Schwartz. Many artists involved in the movement studied with or under Benton at the Kansas City Art Institute. Artists influenced by the Regionalist movement that studied at KCAI include John Stockton de Martelly, Frederic James and Pat Potucek.

 

The works which stress local and small-town themes are often called "American Regionalism", and those depicting urban scenes, with political and social consciousness are called "social realism." Ben Shahn, Reginald Marsh, Isaac Soyer, Raphael Soyer, and Jack Levine are identified as Social realists.