John Steuart Curry (November 14, 1897 – August 29, 1946) was an American painter whose career spanned the years from 1924 until his death. He was noted for his paintings depicting rural life in his home state, Kansas. 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's artistic production was varied, including paintings, book illustrations, prints, and posters.
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. Farm life and animals, tornados, prairie fires, and John Brown (a reminder of the Bleeding Kansas period, and a convicted traitor) were not things most Kansans wanted the state to be known for. He was commissioned to create murals for the Kansas State Capitol, and he completed two: Kansas Pastoral, and his most famous and controversial work, Tragic Prelude, which he considered his greatest.[1] 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. As a result, Curry did not sign the works, which were not hung during his lifetime. He left Topeka in disgust; his planned murals for the capitol rotunda, focusing on the harm caused by poor soil management, never went beyond a few sketches, held by the Kansas Museum of History.
