Eyeconart: The American Scene

Robin Urton: dimensional paintings on glass

The American Scene: Early 20th Century
American Regionalists and American Realism

Grant Wood, "American Gothic"

Andrew Wyeth, "Christina's World", 1948

Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1950s, many American artists sought an indigenous style of realism that would embody the values of ordinary people in the everyday working world. This search for a national style of art grew out of a wariness of European abstraction and a tendency toward isolationism following World War I. In the wake of severe economic uncertainty, social upheaval and political shifts that followed the disastrous Great Depression, American artists maintained a commitment to projecting a very personal view. Intent on shunning the influence of European artists and instruction, these artists struggled to establish and maintain their own identity. Much of this work, especially that now known as Social Realism and Regionalism, falls within the larger movement known as American Scene.