Grant Wood's last painting was published In Saturday Evening Post on my birth day. Enjoy this gift I found. The magazine wrote:
"Grant Wood died February 12th. Spring in Town, this week's Post cover, was the last finished painting of this greatest of America's regionalists. Iowa born and Iowa bred, Grant Wood first realized his integration with the American scene while studying with the postwar neomeditationists of the School of Paris. Of this he has written: 'After all, I lived in Paris a couple of years myself and grew a very spectacular* beard that didn't match my face or hair and read Mencken and was convinced that the Middle Wast was inhibited and barren. But I came back because I learned that French painting is very fine for French people and not necessarily for us, and because I started to analyze what I really knew. I found out. It's Iowa.
'I'd found out the answer when I joined a school of painters in Paris after the war. They believed an artist had to wait for inspiration, very quietly, and the did most of their waiting at the Dome, with brandy. It was then that I realized that all really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. So I went back to Iowa'
Of Spring in Town and Spring in the Country, a companion piece, Mr. Wood wrote shortly before his death: ' In making these painting, as you have have guessed, I had in mind something which I hope to convey to a fairly wide audience in America - the picture of a country rich in the arts of peace; a homely, lovable nation, infinitely worth any sacrifice necessary to its preservation.'
Spring in the Country is now in the Cornelius V. Whitney collection. The original of Spring in Town will hang in Terre Haute's new Swope Art Museum."
* His beard was pink!
