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Historical Artist - John Steuart Curry (1897 - 1946)
Born in 1897, John Steuart Curry grew up on a farm in Kansas. From 1919 to 1926 he was employed
as a magazine illustrator. He then spent a year in Europe before arriving in New York to
encounter his mentor, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. When he began painting, Curry found his
subjects from his mid-western roots, his most famous works being Baptism in Kansas and Hogs
Killing a Rattlesnake. In 1930’s, Curry became a leading figure of the Regionalism
movement and was commissioned to produce several murals, the most notable of which were located
in Topeka, Kansas. He was noted for his paintings depicting life in his home state, Kansas.
Along with Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, he was hailed as one of the three great painters
of American Regionalism of the first half of the twentieth century. Despite popularity among the
rest of the country, native Kansans were less than thrilled with his works. What Curry believed
to be images that expressed positive virtues about the place he remembered from childhood were
conceived to be making fun of the worst aspects of the state. Kansans found the inclusion of
outdoor baptisms and tornados to perpetuate negative stereotypes associated with Kansas and lead
to public embarrassment.
Contemporary American Artists
Art Galleries in United States of America
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