American Regionalism

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, many Americans had a difficult time making enough money live. A lot of people lost money when the stock market crashed and many people were fired from their jobs. At this time, people were not very hopeful about the future.

The Regionalist art movement came about at the end of the 1920s. Instead of painting the world as dark, dirty, and hopeless, Regionalists painted hopeful scenes of the American Midwest. The paintings often showed hard working people who were making it through the depression. They gave people hope that the future would be better.

In Europe, abstract art was becoming popular at this time. Regionalists painted more realistic paintings instead. However, Regionalists cared more that the objects in their paintings were easy to recognize than that their paintings looked exactly like what could be seen in real life.

Regionalism fell out of popularity in the mid-1940s.

In the next few days, I’ll post about some of the better known Regionalists, beginning tomorrow with Grant Wood.

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My Current NaNoWriMo Word Count:

20048 / 50000 words. 40% done!
It was a slow day, but a little
progress is better than no progress.