mposition In Tornado over Kansas, sometimes referred to as just The Tornado, an incoming tornado towers in the background as part of a dark storm. A distressed Kansan farm family in the foreground hurries to enter their storm cellar. Nearest the entry is a green-faced mother cradling her infant. Close by, a red-headed father hurries his daughter and yells at his sons. The two sons are distracted with rescuing farm animals: one holds onto a black cat and another brings a litter of puppies followed closely by their canine mother. Panicked horses can be seen beyond the farm's buildings. In the midst of the storm and chaos, a complacent chicken refuses to move. The painting's tornado is regarded for its physical accuracy, an accomplishment that was likely aided by first-hand descriptions and photographs. The art historian Lauren Kroiz, however, noted multiple "compositional perplexities". The placement of the son with the cat behind the porc
h steps suggests that the family ran along the path covered in wooden boards, but a chained wooden gate blocks that path. The filled metal tub beside the porch indicates recent rainfall, yet no other parts of the scene appear wet. Finally, all of the painting's figures cast shadows except, inexplicably, for the mother. Tornado over Kansas is described as an example of Regionalist painting: by the mid-1930s, art critics were identifying any depictions of daily life in the rural Midwest as "regionalist". The work illustrates a "direct representation" of the artist's own land in favor of the "introspective abstractions" of contemporary European painting, which—according to a 1934 Time article on the contemporary U.S. art scene—were qualities characteristic of Regionalism. Context Black and white photograph of a tornado in a field Photograph of the 1929 Hardtner, Kansas, tornado that may have influenced Tornado over Kansas John Steuart C
urry was born in Dunavant, Kansas in 1897. He left in 1918 to attend Geneva College in Pennsylvania, where he worked as an illustrator for several years. He established a reputation as a painter with his critically acclaimed 1928 work Baptism in Kansas. Curry did not return to Kansas until 1929, when he traveled from his home in Westport, Connecticut, to visit his family's farm in Dunavant for six weeks. During this stay, the extreme weather and storms of the prairies inspired Curry to paint Tornado over Kans
