Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper (born July 22, 1882 in Nyack, N.Y., U.S.A. – died May 15, 1967 in New York City) was an American painter whose realistic depictions of everyday urban scenes shock the viewer and make him recognize the strangeness of a familiar environment. He had a strong influence on the pop art and New Realist painters of the 60s and 70s. Hopper was initially trained as an illustrator, but between 1901 and 1906 he studied painting under Robert Henri, a member of a group of painters called the Ashcan School. Hopper traveled to Europe three times between 1906 and 1910, but he remained untouched by the experimental work that was flourishing in France at the time and continued to chart his own artistic course throughout his career. Although he exhibited paintings in the 1913 Armory Show, he spent most of his time on advertising art and illustrative etchings until 1924. He then began watercolors such as Model Reading (1925), as well as oil paintings. Like the painters of the Ashcan School, Hopper painted the mundane things of city life. But unlike their loosely organized, vibrant paintings, his House by the Railroad (1925) and Room in Brooklyn (1932) depict quiet, anonymous figures and austere geometric shapes within snapshot-like compositions that create an inescapable sense of loneliness. This isolation of his subjects was enhanced by Hopper's characteristic use of light to isolate people and objects in space, whether in the harsh morning light (Early Sunday Morning, 1930) or in the eerie light of an all-night coffee shop (Nighthawks, 1942).