Hopper’s Mystery Replayed in Basel

Published on 12 February 2020, by Valentin Grivet

Like his paintings of figures, Hopper’s landscapes, brought together here by the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, are fascinatingly eerie.

Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Cape Cod Morning, 1950, oil on canvas, 86.7 x 102.3 cm.... Hopper’s Mystery Replayed in Basel

Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Cape Cod Morning, 1950, oil on canvas, 86.7 x 102.3 cm. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian American Art Museum, donated by the Sara Roby Foundation.
© Heirs of Josephine Hopper/2019, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo : Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gene Young

"If you could say it with words, there would be no reason to paint," said Edward Hopper, a painter of silence whose every image, so seemingly simple, is a mystery. Most of the exhibitions devoted to him so far, including the winter 2012 retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, have focused on his solitary, melancholy figure paintings. With the exception of a few works…

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