A tragic icon of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) took influences from Picasso and Mexican surrealism and developed his own way of seeing, interpreting, and expressing. Though his name inevitably conjures up images of the drip paintings for which he is most famous, this technique was only developed midway through his career.
This volume presents a survey of the painting of American artist Edward Hopper (1882-1967). While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. In both his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life, depicting the loneliness of big-city people in canvas after canvas. Many of Hopper's pictures represent views of streets and roads, rooftops, abandoned houses, depicted in brilliant light that strangely belies the melancholy mood of the scenes. Hopper's paintings are marked by striking juxta-positions of color, and by the clear contours with which the figures are demarcated from their surroundings. His extremely precise focus on the theme of modern men and women in natural and man-made environments sometimes lends his pictures a mood of eerie disquiet.
Built by Mies van der Rohe, the gallery houses works German and international classic modern art up to the 1960s and 1970s.