"Grant Wood: Artistic Rags to Riches – an American Success Story" at the LeClaire Community Library -- April 9.
Wednesday, April 9, 6:30 p.m.
LeClaire Community Library, 323 Wisconsin Street, LeClaire IA
An engaging, animated PowerPoint presentation boasting archival photographs and video segments, Randy Lengeling's Grant Wood: Artistic Rags to Riches – an American Success Story will be presented at the LeClaire Community Library on April 9, the event allowing participants to enjoy an evening of art history and state pride in Iowan accomplishments.
Born in 1891 and only 50 when he passed away, Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although he is best known for his paintings, he worked in a large number of media, including lithography, ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects. Throughout his life, he hired out his talents to many Iowa-based businesses as a steady source of income – painting advertisements, sketching rooms of a mortuary house for promotional flyers and, in one case, designing the corn-themed décor for the dining room of a hotel. The artist is associated with the American movement of Regionalism, which was primarily situated in the Midwest, and advanced figurative painting of rural American themes in an aggressive rejection of European abstraction. Wood's work was also marketed through Associated American Artists in New York for many years, he is considered the patron artist of Cedar Rapids, and his childhood country school is depicted on the 2004 Iowa State Quarter.
With the LeClaire library's April 9 program taking place through funding from Humanities Iowa and with support from the State Historical Society, Inc. for the Humanities, Grant Wood: Artistic Rags to Riches – an American Success Story will explore the artist's personal saga, his artistic development, and his meteoric rise to international prominence as the leader of Regionalism. The presentation will also look at Wood's controversial professorship at the State University of Iowa as well as his enduring legacy in art history, the artist having lived nearly his entire life in Iowa.
Program presenter Randy Lengeling is a native Iowan who studied internal medicine and gastroenterology at the University of Iowa and has worked in private practice in Dubuque since 1981. He supplemented his art history knowledge by visiting art museums at every opportunity, and in 1984, viewed a major retrospective of Grant Wood’s work. The inspiring story of this Iowan’s arduous journey from poor farm boy to overnight success was an epiphany. From then on, his avocation has been collecting, researching, curating and lecturing on Iowa’s most famous artist, and Lengeling is a founding and active trustee of the Dubuque Museum of Art, which has a world-class Grant Wood collection.
Grant Wood: Artistic Rags to Riches – an American Success Story will be presented on April 9, participation in the 6:30 p.m. presentation is free, and more information is available by calling 563-289-6007 and visiting LeClaireIowa.gov/153/Library.
