Regionalism

Key points:

From English “regional”.

Regionalism was the art movement of American painting of the 1920s-1940s, which sought to tell about the true life of America, despite the ideological, rapidly developing, avant-garde movements. It was formed on the basis of naturalism in combination with primitivism, the latter borrowed some artistic techniques – bright colours, the “colouring” method, outlining with clear lines, frontal setting of figures in portraits, dryness of painting.

The most famous work of this movement is “American Gothic” by Grant Wood, the picture has appeared a huge number of times in cinema, advertising, and design.

Rigionalist artists depicted American landscapes, the life of farmers in the Midwest of the United States, the life of small towns, the difficulties of the Great Depression, and the history of local folklore. The plots are characterized by general patriotic moods. Their favorite states were Kansas, Iowa, Missouri.

Key ideas:

1. “America First” is the credo of American Regionalism.

2. The main semantic load of Rigionalism painting is the idea of national exclusivity and originality of a certain people.

3. Regionalism seeks to idealize the patriarchal life of American farming states, while at the same time evaluating urban culture as unsustainable. Leading religious artists advocated the revival of the ethno-national values of the American nation and the isolation of American culture from the doctrines of the “European quagmire” and the way of life of the local intelligentsia, despite the fact that they themselves were trained in European countries.