Depression-Era Art

Thomas Hart Benton

• 1889-1975• Missouri artist• advocate of “Regionalism”• self-proclaimed “enemy of

Modernism”• felt that art should be socially relevant• tried to capture “pioneer spirit” of

American laborers and farmers

W.P.A. Murals

“Independence and the Opening of the West”

“Parks, the Circus, the Klan, the Press”

(Part of “Indiana” Mural Cycles

(1932)

“The Arts of Life in America: Arts of the City” (1932)

“Cradling Wheat”(1938)

Dorothea Lange

• 1895-1965• devoted to photographing the

dispossessed and downtrodden with intense compassion.

• often worked with sociologist Paul Taylor

• part of Farm Security Administration’s photo project

“Migrant Mother”(1936)

“Migrant family from Muskogee,Oklahoma”

“White Angel Breadline, San Francisco”(19

36)

“American Gothic” by

Grant Wood(1930)

Edward Hopper

• 1882-1967• American art should remain free

of European influences• paintings often depict scenes of

urban isolation and are concerned with individual psychology

“New York Movie”(1939)

“Room in New York”(1932)