Art Guide · Art movements
American Realism
1920s – 1940s
American Realism covers the artists of the first half of the 20th century who painted everyday life in American cities and the countryside realistically. Edward Hopper’s city scenes and Grant Wood’s Regionalism are the best-known examples.
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Last updated: · Iconica Society editors
City and countryside
While the European avant-garde turned to abstraction, these painters turned to familiar American scenes. Hopper painted diners, offices and empty streets with a cinematic sense of solitude. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Regionalism of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry celebrated the farms and towns of the Midwest.