After World War I, many American artists rejected European modernism and returned to a more realist style and subject matter with which the public could identify, giving rise to regionalism. During the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the artists known as regionalists, or American scene painters, documented the America they understood best—a nation of farms, small towns, and inspiring vistas, populated with citizens of honesty and integrity. Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry were Midwesterners from Missouri and Kansas, respectively. After studying abroad, they returned to the heartland to create American regionalist paintings and teach the next generation of artists.
Regionalism
