| ] BIO ]
 ] Edward Hopper was an American painter whose highly
 ] individualistic works are landmarks of American realism.
 ] His paintings embody in art a particular American
 ] 20th-century sensibility that is characterized by
 ] isolation, melancholy, and loneliness. Hopper was born on
 ] July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York, and studied
 ] illustration in New York City at a commercial art school
 ] from 1899 to 1900. Around 1901 he switched to painting
 ] and studied at the New York School of Art until 1906,
 ] largely under Robert Henri. He made three trips to Europe
 ] between 1906 and 1910 but remained unaffected by current
 ] French and Spanish experiments in cubism. He was
 ] influenced mainly by the great European
 ] realists%u2039Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore
 ] Daumier, Edouard Manet%u2039whose work had first been
 ] introduced to him by his New York City teachers. His
 ] early paintings, such as Le pavillon de flore (1909,
 ] Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City), were
 ] committed to realism and exhibited some of the basic
 ] characteristics that he was to retain throughout his
 ] career: compositional style based on simple, large
 ] geometric forms; flat masses of color; and the use of
 ] architectural elements in his scenes for their strong
 ] verticals, horizontals, and diagonals. Although one of
 ] Hopper's paintings was exhibited in the famous Armory
 ] Show of 1913 in New York City, his work excited little
 ] interest, and he was obliged to work principally as a c
 Edward Hopper-Bio |