As a matchless observer of American society and an attentive witness of the social upheavals the New Continent went through during the last century, Edward Hopper truly incarnates American painting of his era. The Fondation de l‘Hermitage in Lausanne exhibits the most important works of this observer. Meditating on the teachings of the great Dutch masters of light and French modernists of early twentieth century Paris, he very soon made a name for himself as a realist artist among the American avant-garde. Painting small towns and seemingly ordinary everyday scenes, Hopper focused on quiet, often deserted familiar places. Although often empty and bare, they are sometimes haunted by melancholy solitary figures, motionless as if frozen in time awaiting their fate. The chilly precision of brushwork and carefully constructed ´sets`, bathed in dramatic light, create an unsettling aura of strangeness.
