Original 1945 Thomas Hart Benton “Loading Corn” Lithograph WPA AAA SIGNED Framed

This listing is for “Loading Corn, 1945” by Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) pictured above. About this work:An excellent original lithograph by renowned American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975).In the years following World War II, American regionalist art fell out of fashion, its popularity superseded by the promotion of modernist abstraction. Thomas Hart Benton was one of the few survivors of the movement’s major artists. He retreated from the controversial social commentary characteristic of his murals from the previous decade and created a number of landscapes representing agricultural activities, such as “Loading Corn”. Here, Benton depicts a labor-intensive, traditional method of farming that was being rendered obsolete by mechanization. This work, like other landscapes by Benton during this period, is a nostalgic look back in time to the Midwest’s agrarian, pre-industrial past.This work was published by Associated American Artists, New York in an edition of 250. It