Close to the end of World War I, Wood joined the army, working as an artist designing camouflage scenes as well as other art.

This employment provided financial stability, and its seasonal nature allowed him summer trips to Europe to study art.

[citation needed] In addition, his 1928 trip to Munich was to oversee the making of the stained glass windows he had designed for a Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids.

During that time, he supervised mural painting projects, mentored students including Elizabeth Catlett, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the university's cultural community.

The others, John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, returned to the Midwest in the 1930s due to Wood's encouragement and assistance with locating teaching positions for them at colleges in Wisconsin and Missouri, respectively.

Wood is considered the patron artist of Cedar Rapids, and his childhood country school is depicted on the 2004 Iowa State Quarter.

It was seen as part of the trend toward increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of such novels as Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio, Sinclair Lewis's 1920 Main Street, and Carl Van Vechten's The Tattooed Countess.

[13] Wood's inspiration came from Eldon, southern Iowa, where a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with an upper window in the shape of a medieval pointed arch provided the background and also the painting's title.

"[1] The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter, figures modeled by the artist's sister, Nan (1900–1990), and his dentist.

The compositional severity and detailed technique derive from Northern Renaissance paintings, which Wood had seen during his visits to Europe; after this he became increasingly aware of the Midwest's own legacy, which also informed the work.

[13] In 1940, Wood and eight other prominent American artists were hired to document and interpret dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the film The Long Voyage Home, a cinematic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's plays.

There was an unsuccessful attempt by a colleague, Lester Longman, to get him fired both on explicit moral grounds and for his advocacy of regionalism.

[17] Critic Janet Maslin states that his friends knew him to be "homosexual and a bit facetious in his masquerade as an overall-clad farm boy.

This addition led to the expansion of his vision for 1142 to include a rotating community of artists modeled after the colonies that Wood tried to establish in his lifetime such as the one at Stone City.

Hayes partnered with the University of Iowa on his vision, and since 2011, the Grant Wood Art Colony holds a recurring symposium and hosts artist fellows in painting & drawing, printmaking, and interdisciplinary performance.