Nighthawks Edward Hopper
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Nighthawks, 1942
Oil on canvas
84.1 x 152.4 cm
Edward Hooper is one of the most important Realists of the 20th century, and not only in the United States. He was trained for five years under Robert Henri, a member of the Ashcan school of painters. He exhibited at the Armoury Show in 1913, but from then until 1923 he abandoned painting, earning his living by commercial illustration. The context of the Hopper's art is the American Scene Painting movement, which represented a realist and antimodernist style of painting popular in the United States during the Great Depression. As a reaction against the modern European style, American Scene Painting was seen as an attempt to define a uniquely American style of art. Hopper gained the reputation of being an artist who portrayed the loneliness and boredom of life in the big city.
Edward Hopper painted Nighthawks as oil on canvas in 1942. It was purchased the same year with the help of the Friends of American Art Collection for the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois...