Edward Hopper · Nighthawks

1942 – Oil on canvas – Art Institute of Chicago

Images: © Artists Right Society, New York

“Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city”, Edward Hopper said about this work. “Nighthawks” is not only the most famous and reproduced work by the artist, but it has also become the symbol of the solitude in the contemporary metropolis, and it is now one of the undisputed icons of 20th-century art.

This famous painting is still open to many subjective interpretations. This nocturnal scene depicts four anonymous figures (mysteriously, Hopper called this painting “a three-character work”) inside a highly illuminated bar. There is nothing outside: just the darkness and loneliness of an asphalt and concrete jungle. By not showing the entrance to the bar, Hopper has turned it into a glass prison in which no one can enter (or leave).

Text: G. Fernández, theartwolf.com