About Thomas Hart Benton (painter)
Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter, muralist, and printmaker. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. The fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. Known as the "little giant of the Ozarks", Maecenas named his son after his own granduncle, Thomas Hart Benton, one of the first two United States Senators elected from Missouri. A relative unknown, he won a commission to paint the murals of Indiana life planned by the state in the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago. During the late 1930s he created some of his best-known work, including the allegorical nude Persephone. His most famous student, Jackson Pollock, whom he mentored in the Art Students League, founded the Abstract Expressionist movement.
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