The City by Edward Hopper

This monumental artwork belongs fully to the American Realism movement, which is interested in the cold verticality and grandeur of expanding metropolises. The renowned artist Hopper Edward deploys all his architectural talent in his famous creation entitled “The City” to depict an aerial view of New York. Through this structured and bare composition, the painter proposes a captivating reflection on urban solitude and the alienation of city life.

From an elevated viewpoint, one observes a tangle of roofs and typical buildings of the metropolis. In the center rises a classical-style corner building in gray stone, decorated with a mansard roof and arched windows with white and red striped shades. Behind this building, an immense row of red brick buildings stretches horizontally, while on the right stands the white and geometric facade of a modern skyscraper. In the foreground, small flat terra cotta-colored roofs structure the space. A vast plaza or gray concrete park stretches on the left, where one can distinguish tiny human silhouettes walking silently under a hazy and uniform gray sky.

The artist demonstrates exceptional craftsmanship in the geometric representation of urban architectures and the arrangement of perspective planes. His mastery of the oil technique is manifested in the realistic rendering of shadows and sculpted stone, structuring the space to offer a scene of great visual depth and poetry.