Exhibition

The first great Edward Hopper exhibition in Italy had an huge success both in Milan and Rome.

The exhibition, that closed on June 13th, made 206.342 visitors at the Museo Fondazione Roma. In Milan, at the first venue at Palazzo reale, the visitors have been 202.127, a real record! Edward Hopper has been seen by 408.469 people, with over 3000 tickets sold a day during the last exhibition days in the capitol.

The event will continue in Switzerland, at the Fondation de l'Hermitage, from June 25th to October 17th.

The exhibition is curated by Carter Foster, the Whitney Museum curator. Edward Hopper’s career is closely linked to the Whitney Museum of American Art, which hosted various exhibitions of his works from the first in 1920 at the Whitney Studio Club, to the memorable shows held in the museum in 1960, 1964 and 1980. Since 1968, thanks to the bequest of the artist’s widow Josephine, the Whitney has been home to his entire legacy: more than 2,500 works which include paintings, drawings and etchings.

More than 160 works on show such as The Sheridan Theatre (1937), New York Interior (circa 1921), Seven A. M. (1948), South Carolina Morning (1955), Summer Interior (1909), Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947), Morning Sun (1952), Second Story Sunlight (1960), A Woman in the Sun (1961) and the stunning Girlie Show (1941). The exhibition explores the whole of Hopper’s oeuvre, and all the techniques used by an artist now viewed as a great master of the twentieth century.

Most of the works are length by the Whitney Museum but also by other important American museums as the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago and the Columbus Museum of Art.

The exhibition covers Hopper’s entire oeuvre, from his education, to his years as a student in Paris, up to his “classic” and best-known period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, closing with the large, intense images of his later years. The show explores all of the artist’s favourite techniques: oil, watercolour and etching, and devotes special attention to the fascinating relationship between his preparatory drawings and his paintings: a vital aspect of his work that up till now has not been greatly explored in the exhibitions dedicated to him. The exhibition also exceptionally includes one of his Artist’s ledger Book, the famous ledgers he and his wife compiled, and which contain sketches of many of his oil paintings.

The exhibition also features a photographic, biographical and historical component, tracing American history from the 1920s to the 1960s: the Depression, the Kennedys, the boom years. An opportunity for greater insight into today’s global recession and Barack Obama’s America.