Flood
Flood
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1937
Lithograph
9 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. (23.5 x 31.1 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 196.
Two women look across the water at their own submerged home as the current rushes past. Benton drew the scene in the Missouri Bootheel during the Ohio-Mississippi floods of 1937, which put large parts of the southeast Missouri lowlands under water. Published by Associated American Artists, New York, in an edition of 196.
The lithograph derives from a series of drawings Benton made of flood conditions for the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and stands close to reportage. (Fath 16)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Rejecting the European modernism of his early years, he became, with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a leader of American Regionalism, painting the farmers, laborers, and folklore of the Midwest and South in a dynamic, sculptural style. His major murals include America Today (1930–31, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) in the Missouri State Capitol, and in 1934 he became the first artist to appear on the cover of Time. Beginning in 1934, Associated American Artists published his lithographs in editions sold by mail at modest prices, making them among the most widely collected American prints of the century. Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock was his student, and later at the Kansas City Art Institute. He died in his Kansas City studio in 1975.
Two women look across the water at their own submerged home as the current rushes past. Benton drew the scene in the Missouri Bootheel during the Ohio-Mississippi floods of 1937, which put large parts of the southeast Missouri lowlands under water. Published by Associated American Artists, New York, in an edition of 196.
The lithograph derives from a series of drawings Benton made of flood conditions for the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and stands close to reportage. (Fath 16)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Rejecting the European modernism of his early years, he became, with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a leader of American Regionalism, painting the farmers, laborers, and folklore of the Midwest and South in a dynamic, sculptural style. His major murals include America Today (1930–31, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) in the Missouri State Capitol, and in 1934 he became the first artist to appear on the cover of Time. Beginning in 1934, Associated American Artists published his lithographs in editions sold by mail at modest prices, making them among the most widely collected American prints of the century. Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock was his student, and later at the Kansas City Art Institute. He died in his Kansas City studio in 1975.
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