John Steuart Curry (November 14, 1897 – August 29, 1946) was an American painter whose career spanned the years from 1924 until his death.

Along with Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, he was hailed as one of the three great painters of American Regionalism of the first half of the twentieth century.

Curry was Kansas's best-known painter, but his works were not popular with Kansans, who felt that he did not portray the state positively.

Curry's paintings often depicted farm life and animals, tornadoes, prairie fires, and the violent Bleeding Kansas period (featuring abolitionist John Brown, who at the time was derided as a fanatical traitor) – subjects that Kansans did not want to be representative of the state.

Reaction was so negative that the Kansas Legislature passed a measure to keep them, or future works of his, from being hung on the capitol walls.

He left Topeka in disgust; his planned eight smaller murals for the Capitol rotunda on the first floor never went beyond sketches, now held by the Kansas Museum of History.

Curry was born on a farm in Dunavant, Kansas, November 14, 1897; the house has been moved to Oskaloosa and there are plans to make a museum of it.

Despite living on a Midwestern farm, both of Curry's parents were college educated and had even visited Europe for their honeymoon.

Curry's early life consisted of caring for the animals on the farm, attending the nearby high school and excelling in athletics.

In 1926, Curry spent a year in Paris studying the works of Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier, as well as the color techniques of Titian and Rubens.

After his return to the United States he settled in New York City and married Clara Derrick; shortly thereafter, they moved to an artists' colony in Westport, Connecticut.

[citation needed] In 1936, Curry was appointed as the first artist-in-residence at the College of Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, which built him a small studio.

He had no classes to teach nor any specific duties; he was free to travel throughout the state and promote art in farming communities by providing personal instruction to students.

Curry was one of the three great painters of American regionalistic art; the others were Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood.

As put by Meyer Schapiro, "Regionalism obscured the crucial forces of history, as defined by Marx, and provided entertaining distractions from the realities facing oppressed people."

As seen by Curry, nostalgia for rural Kansan life ignored its shortcomings: tornados, prairie fires, dust storms, plagues of insects, and life-threatening floods.

[4] It was originally intended, in 1936, for the new U.S. Department of Justice Building, but sketches were rejected by federal officials, who told Curry that they feared that “serious difficulties...might arise as a result of the racial implications of the subject matter.” Curry painted two other murals in that building, Movement of the Population Westward and Law versus Mob Rule.

However, the design caught the attention of Wisconsin Law School dean Lloyd K. Garrison, great-grandson of the famous abolitionist Wm.

[citation needed] This displeased many Kansans, who did not want soil erosion, or the alleged errors of Kansas farmers, in their Capitol.

[citation needed] In August 1928, Curry painted Baptism in Kansas, which was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and met with almost instant success.

[citation needed] No well-known Baptismal representations by old world masters employ the unique compositional layout that Curry favors.

The painting was unveiled in 1929 just before the Wall Street Crash in October and provided those in the city with the romance of man versus nature themes.

Typical of Curry's work of the 1930s, he depicted scenes of labor, family, and land, in order to demonstrate peace, struggle, and perseverance that he had come to believe was the essence of American life, the spirit of Kansas.

John Brown, convicted of treason against the state of Virginia, was not someone most Kansans felt proud of, nor was the Bleeding Kansas period as a whole.

Adding to public consternation was Curry's plan to portray ruinous soil erosion, in Kansas a very controversial and political topic, in another mural.

It is the only work of Curry's to have a book devoted solely to it,[2] and is also well-known as the source material for the album cover of rock band Kansas' 1974 debut record.

Curry avoided exploiting the controversial subjects in which Rivera became involved because he did not believe they added any artistic quality to his work.

[citation needed] Curry's few semi-political paintings evolved out of his personal experiences rather than created as a display of social commentary.

Curry's paintings were entertaining and easy to grasp, and allowed viewers to see a more primitive, isolated, non-commercial version of America.