Hopper and his age

Edward Hopper was born in 1882 and grew up in Nyack, a small town in New York State. He studied illustration for a short period, then painting at New York School of Art under legendary masters William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. He visited Europe three times (from 1906 to 1907, in 1909 and 1910) and his experiences in Paris, above all, made a lasting mark on him: he remained a lifelong Francophile, even after settling permanently in New York in 1913.
Despite his imposing physical presence – he was six foot two – he was famous for his reserve, and very rarely wrote or spoke about his work. He died at the age of 84 and his work enjoyed the esteem of critics and the public throughout his career, despite the success of the up-and-coming avant-garde movements, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.
In 1948 the magazine “Look” named him one of America’s greatest artists; in 1950 the Whitney Museum dedicated an important retrospective to him, and in 1956 he appeared on the cover of “Time”.
In 1967, the year of his death, he represented the United States at the prestigious Bienal di São Paulo.
Since then Hopper’s work has been celebrated in numerous exhibitions and has inspired countless painters, poets and filmmakers. In a 1995 essay the great novelist John Updike paid an eloquent tribute to his “calm, silent, stoic, luminous, classic” works.

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CINEMA

1936

Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin,

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1954

Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock

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1960

Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock

House by the Railroad, 1925
Oil on canvas, 61 ×73,7 cm
New York, The Museum of Modern Art

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SCIENCE

1903

Wright Brothers make the first successful flight in their “flying machine” at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

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1957

The USSR launches the satellite “Sputnik,” followed by the U. S.’s Explorer 1, initiating the “space race”.

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ART

1929

Museum of Modern Art opens in New York with an exhibition of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Cézanne.

www.moma.org

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1931

Whitney Museum of American Art opens in New York

http://shopwhitney.org

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1959

Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens in New York.

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LITTERATURE

1925

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1926

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1941

Take the ‘A’ Train, Duke Ellington

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1954

Elvis Presley records “Heartbreak Hotel;” 300,000 copies are sold in three weeks.