John Curry was born on November 14, 1897, in Dunavant, Kansas, United States, the eldest of five children to parents Thomas Smith Curry and Margaret Steuart Curry. His childhood home was filled with many reproductions of Peter Paul Rubens and Gustave Doré, and these artists' styles played a significant role in crafting Curry's own style.
In 1916 John entered the Kansas City Art Institute, but after only a month there he transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, where he stayed for two years. In 1918 he attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. In 1926 he spent a year studying in Europe.
In 1919 John left college and moved to Leonia, New Jersey, where he began work as a free-lance illustrator, largely under the influence of Harvey T. Dunn. In 1923, Curry moved to Westport, Connecticut where, though he continued to work as an illustrator, he began to try to produce paintings of museum quality. He sent his first painting to the National Academy of Design in 1924.
Determined to pursue his interest in fine art, Curry traveled to Paris in 1926. In Paris, Curry made frequent trips to the Louvre to learn from the great painters of the past and he was consequently exposed to the modern painting of Matisse and Picasso. But he returned to Westport in 1927 convinced that it was necessary for him to paint those subjects that he knew intimately. Curry believed that a sincere and lasting value was to be found in the experienced realities of the basic farm existence from his childhood: the religion, the physical activities, and the natural sensations of the rural community. This imagery was an immediate way for Curry to maintain ties to the past, and although between 1919 and 1936 Curry lived for the most part in New York, he began to earn his reputation as a Regionalist by drawing inspiration from the Midwest.
Upon his return to his Connecticut studio, Curry painted his first major painting, "Baptism in Kansas", finished in the summer of 1928. The painting was exhibited that year at the Corcoran Gallery of Art's Biennial in Washington. In 1930, Curry had his first one-man show at the Whitney Studio Galleries in New York. This exhibition brought him recognition, and within two years, both the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art had purchased paintings from him.
A long fascination with the circus, and an urge to explore new subject matter led Curry to join up with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in April 1932. This resulted in a remarkable series of sketches and paintings humans and animals in action. The circus subjects possess the qualities that characterize much of Curry's art - dramatic action, activated space, and sculptural articulation. These works also reveal a theme that was maintained throughout his work, the historical struggle of man and nature. Following the circus tour, Curry began to teach at Cooper Union in 1932 - 1934 and at the Art Students League in 1932 - 1936.
During the 1930s, Curry painted a number of important murals. Under local sponsorship, he painted murals for two public schools in Westport and Norwalk, Connecticut. In June of 1935 he was chosen by the Federal Art Project to paint a mural for the U.S. Department of Justice Building in Washington. Other projects included murals for the Kansas State Capitol Building, Topeka, Kansas; College of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin, Law School Library at the University of Wisconsin, and the First National Bank in Madison, Wisconsin.
In 1936, Curry became the first artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin. The position permitted him a great deal of freedom, and he produced an impressive body of work, including "Sketching", "Wisconsin", while maintaining active participation in the national exhibitions, where he won many prestigious awards. Curry maintained his post as artist-in-residence up to his death on August 29, 1946 in Madison, Wisconsin.
John did not believe in political propaganda, particularly the Marxist kind that Diego Rivera popularized in the 1930s.
Quotations: “I have my own ideas about telling the story of pioneers coming into Kansas,” he once said. “I want to paint this war with nature and I want to paint the things I feel as a native Kansan.”
In 1937, John was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1943.
Quotes from others about the person
John Steuart Curry never forgot that he came off a Kansas farm, that his folks were plain Kansas folks whose lives were spent with the plain, simple, elemental things of the earth and sky. His art and the meanings of his art were never cut loose from this background. To the end his ideal audience was a Kansas audience. Dealing with what that audience experienced and knew about, John wanted its appreciation more than anything else. He didn't get it.
John married Clara Derrick on January 23, 1923. After her death on July 10, 1932 he remarried on June 2, 1934 to Kathleen Gould.
