BUILDING HIGHER EDWARD HOPPER: THE PAINTER OF AMERICAN URBAN LANDSCAPE Edward Hopper was born in the small Hudson River town of Nyack, New York State, on 22nd July 1882. His family were solidly middle-class: his father owned a grocery where the young Hopper sometimes worked after school. By 1899 he had already decided to become an artist, but his parents persuaded him to begin studying commercial illustration because this seemed to offer a more secure future. He first attended the New York School of Illustrating, then in 1900 he transferred to the New York School of Art. However, like the majority of the young American artists of the time, he desired to study in France. In addition to spending some months in Paris, he visited London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels. On the second occasion he visited Spain as well as France. Hopper settled in Greenwich Village, which was his base for the rest of his life, and in 1929 he married Jo Nivison. In 1925, he painted what is now generally recognized to be his first fully mature picture, The House by the Railroad . Hopper painted in both oil and water colors and preferred subjects such as streets, gas stations, theatres, bridges, railroads and lighthouses. Most of his works are strangely empty of people, but are still full of emotion. Many express a sense of loneliness but they convey a feeling of great space and warm sunlight. Some paintings, such as his celebrated image of a gas-station, Gas (1940), even have elements which anticipate Pop Art. He died in 1967, isolated if not forgotten. His true importance has only been fully realized in the years since his death. (Adapted from Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists, by Edward Lucie-Smith, Thames&Hudson) to attend: frequentare fully: pienamente grocery: negozio di alimentari loneliness: solitudine to seem: sembrare to settle: sistemarsi water colours: colori a tempera In this building near Washington Square Park there was Hopper s study.