About John Steuart Curry
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. Born and raised on a farm in Dunavant, Kansas, Curry drew the raw material of his life's work from the very soil beneath his feet. 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. He trained at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago before working as a magazine illustrator, and then traveled to Paris in 1926 where he studied for a year with Russian academician Basil Schoukhaieff.
His artistic production was varied, including paintings, book illustrations, prints, and posters.
With Benton and Wood, Curry led the movement to create and celebrate what he felt was an indigenous and democratic American art — Regionalism — in a reaction against European modernist trends.
His first major painting, *Baptism in Kansas*, was greeted with critical acclaim when exhibited at the 1928 Corcoran Gallery of Art biennial. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney took notice, provided Curry with financial support for the next two years, and later purchased *Baptism* for her newly established museum.
Among his best known works are *Baptism in Kansas* (1928), *Hogs Killing a Rattlesnake* (1930), and a series of paintings on circus life that he executed after touring with the Ringling Brothers in 1932.
He completed *Justice Defeating Mob Violence* for the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C., one of two murals he painted as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist. For the Topeka State House in Kansas, Curry completed one of his most powerful and controversial images: a Moses-like representation of abolitionist John Brown in a mural titled *Tragic Prelude*.
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
About this work
Curry captures a moment of practical labor with the muscular conviction he brought to every subject drawn from American working life. *Flats Fixed* depicts what the title announces—a mechanic or laborer attending to a vehicle's punctured tire, likely in a modest garage or roadside setting. The composition centers on honest, physical work: hands engaged with rubber and metal, the body bent in concentration. Curry's palette runs warm and earthy, anchored by the deep browns and ochres that ground his figures in authentic terrain. The brushwork carries the influence of Rubens and Doré visible throughout his career—robust forms rendered with sculptural weight, muscularity that speaks to dignity rather than struggle. This is not romantic labor; it is specific, tactile, necessary.
In Curry's oeuvre, such scenes belong to his deliberate project of elevating everyday American life to the status of high art. Born on a Kansas farm, he spent his career mining rural and working-class experience for subjects that Eastern European modernism had taught him to dismiss. *Flats Fixed* exemplifies Regionalism's democratic vision—the belief that a man attending to a tire deserved paint and canvas as surely as any historical or mythological subject. This small, unglamorous moment becomes monumental through Curry's hand.
Hung in a study, workshop, or casual living space, this print speaks to those who recognize dignity in work itself. It settles comfortably in rooms lit by natural light, where its warm tones can breathe. The painting asks nothing theatrical of its viewer—only acknowledgment that what we do with our hands, however ordinary, matters.