One of the largest retrospectives of works by Edward Hopper, dubbed the painter of American loneliness and isolation, opened on Tuesday.

One of the paintings in the exhibition, a 1932 oil on canvas called Room in New York, features a man reading a newspaper while at the other end of the room a woman looks absently at a piano

The Hopper show at Madrid’s Thyssen Museum features 73 paintings, drawings, prints and watercolours by the 20th century realist.

“It is very unlikely that an exhibition like this can be repeated in Europe in the next decade, if ever,” said Tomas Llorens, one of the two curators at the Thyssen.

“It is a very complicated project because Hopper’s output was scarce, he was a very slow painter. For an American museum, lending a Hopper painting is an extremely difficult decision.”

Most of the works depict scenes of people on their own, or isolated among others.

One of the paintings in the exhibition, a 1932 oil on canvas called Room in New York, features a man reading a newspaper while at the other end of the room a woman looks absently at a piano.

The exhibition is divided in two parts. The first covers the years of Hopper’s training with works from 1920 to 1924 shown alongside paintings by other artists, including France’s Edgar Degas and Albert Marquet.

The second part focuses on his mature works.

“What we are proposing is a European re-reading of Hopper’s works,” said Didier Ottinger, the associate director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris who is the other curator.

The exhibition will feature more works by Hopper when it moves to Paris because the Grand Palais has more space available, he added.

Hopper died in his studio in New York City in 1967, at the age of 84.

The exhibition runs until September 16 in Madrid before moving on to Paris, where it will be displayed at the Grand Palais between October 10 and January 28.

Let’s get to know the life of Hopper

American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was one of the foremost exponents of 20th-century realism. Although he did not really attract the attention of critics or the public for much of his life and was forced to work as an illustrator to earn a living, his works are now icons of modern life and society

Hopper studied at the New York School of Art with William Merrit Chase and Robert Henri.

He made several trips to Europe and was very interested in European culture and art from a very early age, particularly in the works of Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. (Works by a number of the artists who influenced Hopper are, in fact, included in this interesting exhibition.)

In 1910 he settled permanently into his New York City home in Washington Square, which, from 1930 onwards, he left only during his summer sojourns in New England, chiefly to Cape Cod, where he had a house built. In 1924 he married Jo Nivinson, who not only posed for him on numerous occasions but, very importantly, kept a detailed record of his work throughout his life.

Hopper’s artistic output is relatively small, as he painted at a slow, leisurely pace. He was initially connected with the so-called American Scene, a heterogeneous group of artists who shared the same interest in typically American themes. But Hopper soon developed a personal style.

His taciturn nature and austere manner were powerfully reflected in his oeuvre, which is characterised as a whole by its simplified depiction of reality and mastery at capturing contemporary man’s solitude.

His painting provides an insight into the America of the Great Depression, which for him symbolised the crisis of modern life.