Artwork Page for January

Details / Information for January

January

1940–41
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Grant Wood

(American, 1891–1942)
Culture
America
Medium
oil on masonite panel
Measurements
Framed: 67 x 82.5 x 7.5 cm (26 3/8 x 32 1/2 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 45.7 x 60.1 cm (18 x 23 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2002.2
Copyright
Art © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
226B American Modern
Print
?

Did You Know?

For many years Wood maintained his painting studio on the property of a funeral home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Description

One of the last paintings Wood created before his untimely death from liver cancer, January has a decidedly nostalgic cast. According to the artist, the painting was "deeply rooted in the memories of my early childhood on an Iowa farm. . . . it is a land of plenty here which seems to rest, rather than suffer, under the cold." One sign of activity, in the form of rabbit tracks, infiltrates the otherwise dormant scene. Wood’s composition teems with abstract design, most notably through the rhythmically geometric array of snow-laden corn shocks that seem to recede infinitely into the distance.
A horizontally oriented stylized oil painting depicts repeating yellow cone-shaped piles of corn stalks, coated in snow, as if the piles are cloaked figures, heads downturned, walking in a procession out from the dark gray sky, the perfectly straight rows receding into the distance. The snow before the first row is marked with rabbit tracks that emerge from a triangular opening in the first and largest corn pile.

January

1940–41

Grant Wood

(American, 1891–1942)
America

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