Before World War II, the concept of Modernism was not clearly defined in the context of American art. There was also a struggle to define a uniquely American type of art. On the path to determining what American art would be, American artists rejected the modern trends emanating from the Armory Show and European influences particularly from the School of Paris. By rejecting European abstract styles, American artists chose to adopt academic realism, which depicted American urban and rural scenes. Partly due to the Great Depression, Regionalism became one of the dominant art movements in America in the 1930s the other being Social Realism. At the time, the United States was still a heavily agricultural nation with a much smaller portion of its population living in industrial cities such as N