Jun 14, 2018 - Sale 2482

Sale 2482 - Lot 131

Price Realized: $ 21,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
JOHN STEUART CURRY
Plowing Before a Storm.

Oil on canvas, circa 1935. 535x640 mm; 21x25 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto.

Curry (1897-1946), along with Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) and Grant Wood (1891-1942), is considered to be one of the foremost American Regionalist painters. Born on a farm in Dunavant, Kansas, to college educated parents, he studied first at the Kansas City Art Institute, and later at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. An extremely well-rounded artist, Curry's artistic output included paintings, prints, posters and book illustrations throughout his career, and he continuously returned to the rural landscapes and characters of the American heartland as a source of artistic inspiration.

Among Curry's most celebrated works are his heroic images of midwestern farmers set against menacing weather conditions, which evoke the harsh realities of rural life during the Dust Bowl of the early 1930s. These include The Storm, 1930, and The Line Storm, 1935, subjects for which Curry produced lithographs based on his same-titled oils (see Cole 11 and 27).