English
On the 12th of June 2012 the works of the American painter, will be the protagonists at Thyssen Museum in the Spanish capital. This is the first really important exhibition devoted to the artist at European level and it is also, a unique opportunity to enjoy his most famous and daring paintings.
With this exhibit, visitors to the Thyssen will tour Hopper´s life since the moment he traveled for the first time to Paris in 1907, discovering and falling in love with European painting until the end of his days. 70 works by this artist in total, 40 of them created and during his older age as: “House by the Railroad ” or “Gas”, both part of the permanent collection of the MOMA Museum in New York.
Edward Hopper was inspired by the film industry for many years, but after the 50’s, it was the other way around and ended up inspiring even the Hitchcock films. The painting “House by the Railroad”, for example, inspired the film “Psycho”. Also, he was able to inspire several American poets that mentioned his works in their compositions.
Edward Hopper was not interested in avant-garde like Matisse or Picasso. He was inspired by artists such as Albert Marquet, Félix Valloton and Walter Sickert” as you will be able to appreciate in this exhibition. He was an almost lyrical painter. However, he didn’t sell any painting before he was 43, so the curators of the exhibition have decided to divide his work into two, and make a comparison of his beginnings to his final success.
Let´s get to know the life of Hopper. He was born in Nyack, a small town on the Hudson River in the bosom of a bourgeois family. When he was a kid, in 1900, he enrolled in the “New York School of Art”, an important school where he got to know other future stars of the American art of mid-century as Rockwell Kent and George Bellows. There he also met 3 teachers that were central to his work. We speak about William Merrit Chase, Kenneth H. Miller and Robert Henri. From them he learned among other things, a picture crisp and clean, organized in a spatial composition and perfectly ordered.
But soon he began to travel and be fed by other sources. In 1906 he first traveled to Europe, visited Paris and met the language of the Impressionists. Some time later visited other European capitals: Berlin, Brussels and Paris.
His language, the one that spoken in his paintings, was the result of his second trip to Paris where he created “Saint-Gemain” and “Fontaineableu”. And a third trip there put him in contact with Degas, thanks to whom he was able to improve his technique. And in 1910 his journeys takes him to Spain attracted by great artists of the moment as Picasso, Monet, Manet, Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec and Courbet. And of course, even if earlier, met the work of Goya. He was crazy about it.
He narrated scenes of coffee, theater, cabaret … ultimately embodied the customs of the seventeenth century. He had the ability to draw and paint realistic situations without narration because Hopper does not need to descend to details. It´s like the live image in the subconscious of each one of us, reason for which he wasn’t a narrative painter.
How to reach the Museo Thyssen? The nearest Metro stations are Banco de España or Sevilla. Located in the Paseo del Prado (near the Plaza de Cibeles) where it shares ground with the Reina Sofia and Prado (known as the triangle of museums).
Find apartments in Madrid to visit the Edward Hopper’s exhibition at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid. You won’t regret!
