Iowa View

The Iowa View is a painting created in 1941 by Grant wood using the Regionalism style. Grant Wood used oil on canvas to create a wonderful piece of art, and it is currently in a private collection.

The painting showed the landscape and gave his viewers a portrait of rural America. The reason behind the painting could be because Wood loved the countryside. After all, he grew up in it; the simple life and the aesthetics of this painting show just how much Grant Wood appreciated the rural areas. See also American Gothic.

The Iowa View showed a glimpse of the main economic activity in Iowa. The hay stacks give viewers a glimpse of what it feels like to live on a ranch and work on the land. The stacked hays also show they completed work after a day’s hard work, someone’s chores for the day. Viewers could imagine Woodworking on the farm and collecting the hay used for cattle feed. It was a visual element that showed how much effort humans exerted on the land. The landscape idea has evolved since Grant Wood tapped into the idea.

The painter put it out there to change social relations and give the rich the view of what others were doing to feed themselves or essentially where their food was coming from. The mediums used on the Iowa View show that Wood's artistic vision did not develop in a Midwestern vacuum, but it can be attributed to Arts and Crafts design principles. These principles focused on uncomplicated design, form, and finding inspiration in stylized art from the past.

Wood’s stylistic shift began after visiting Europe for the fourth time in 1928, giving rise to the creation of the Iowa View. Wood saw the geographical interest when visiting Europe and decided to bring home what he had learned. When he began showing people what it meant to be in a large piece of land while people were clamoring for cities searching for jobs, it would draw a lot of interest from art curators.

The Iowa View was meant to be free from the ideological ways of individuals because not only one person should interpret art. Art had a rich taste where people who possessed works of art had the edge when it came to interpreting art. The individualist theory is what this and other paintings created by Grant Wood sought to remove. The painting allowed imaginative and creative human experience into the landscape experience through art. It expressed the value of land to the people and the joyful escapism that could engulf any viewer once they saw what the other part of the world had to offer.