Short bio of thomas hart benton
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Thomas Hart Benton
THE MURALS OF THOMAS HART BENTON
In 1932 a set of large wall murals was unveiled on 10 West 8th Street in New York City. It was Arts of Life in America - four huge wall panels and four more around the ceiling. These panels depict the 'Arts' of everyday life - music, games, dance, and sports. They also show regional diversity, unemployment, crime, and political nonsense. They give a comprehensive portrait of life in the 1930's.
A GLIMPSE AT THE FIVE MAJOR PANELS
Benton had a fascinating working method, and was a controversial figure in the world of mural art, often in public conflict with others. He was a pivotal figure in the story of art in America. He was originally influenced by the old masters of European art, then by modern artists experimenting with abstraction. He turned away from abstraction to paint his own country and its people, becoming a 'Regionalist' painter. As the tutor of the young Jackson Pollock, his influence passed on to the next generat
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Summary of Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton was one of America's most popular and heavily patronized modern artists during the decades leading up to World War II, and his murals were especially acclaimed. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, Benton gained artistic fame as a Regionalist painter, depicting the people and culture of the American Midwest, in particular his native state of Missouri. While his subjects were primarily based in America's heartland, he lived in New York City for twenty years. Considered bygd many to be reactionary due to his outspoken and inflammatorisk diatribes against the art world, Benton, a populist, did in fact boldly use his art to protest the KKK, lynching, and fascism during the 1930s and 1940s. Benton was also an admired teacher at New York's Art Students League, offering students grounding in europeisk art history, as well as an awareness of European modernism. The advent of sammanfattning Expressionism has all but eclipsed Benton's importance
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Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton—painter, muralist, and writer from Missouri—developed, along with artists Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a style of painting in the 1920s that became known as regionalism. Benton was influenced early in his career by a sketching trip he took through northwest Arkansas in 1926. He returned to Arkansas to sketch and paint periodically, primarily in the Buffalo River area. Benton also enjoyed floating and fishing on the Buffalo River and opposed efforts to dam it during the 1960s.
Tom Benton was born on April 15, 1889, in Neosho, Missouri. He was the oldest of four children born to Maecenus Eason (M. E.) and Elizabeth (Wise) Benton. M. E. was a lawyer and served as a congressman from 1897 until 1905. Benton was named for M. E.’s grand uncle, Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton.
Benton began to have interest in art as a boy. He attended high school in Neosho in 1905–06, but he quit when he got a job drawing cartoons at The Joplin