BILBAO.- A dozen prints by José Antonio Azpilikueta inspired by the US painter Edward Hopper have just joined the museum’s graphic works collection thank to the donation by the art publisher José Ignacio Olave.

The set of works currently on display comes from the portfolio (2/5), which Olave donated to the museum last year, and join the 78 works that the publisher has donated since 2022.

After Hopper (The American Night)

For his seventieth birthday, José Ignacio Olave (Bilbao, 1953) commissioned Azpilikueta to make twelve drawings inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper (Nyack, 1882—New York, 1967) to illustrate twelve of his own short stories that he was publishing.

• Drama in The Far East Tea Garden / Chop Suey (1929)
• Another Way of Living / House by the Railroad (1925)
• The Elliptical Way / Hotel Room (1931)
• Lost in Queens / New York Movie (1939)
• I Want to See Your Sun / Morning Sun (1952)
• Wedding in Newport / Hotel Lobby (1943)
• New Moonlight / Room in New York (1932)
• Next Stop St. Vincent's Hospital / Compartment C, Car 293 (1938)
• A Life in Vain / Nighthawks (1942)
• Sunday Morning at the Border / Early Sunday Morning (1930)
• There Were Signals in the Sky / Excursion into Philosophy (1959)
• Fivetown Lighthouse / Cape Cod Morning (1950)

As an admirer familiar with Edward Hopper’s works who had visited his anthological exhibitions in London (Tate Modern, 2004) and Madrid (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2012), Olave gave the artist complete freedom. The only stipulation was that the size of the drawings had to be larger than their purpose as illustrations would warrant, to which Azpilikueta added respect for the original proportions in Hopper’s paintings.

Following these two premises, Azpilikueta individually tackled each drawing in a process he considered an ‘intervention’. He used grids, line drawings and flat inks so the images inspired by the stories could exist beyond the literary sphere and materialise in a portfolio of prints—five editions of which were published—in which the artist reinterprets Hopper’s imagery from a personal, provocative and sophisticatedly light-hearted perspective.

The cordial relationship between the project’s promoter and the artist materialised in two visual events: the portrait of the publisher as the background figure in Drama in The Far East Tea Garden and the Olave brand imprint in I Want to See Your Sun.

The publisher is holding an open lecture with himself and artist to accompany the exhibition, an exclusive encounter for Friends of the Museum in which they will explore this series’ origin and creative process.

The prints, which were made in 2024, stand out for the experimental way the artist explores the relationship between figure, space and visual silence, features that naturally and realistically engage in dialogue with the cinematographic atmosphere of Hopper’s urban scenes and solitary landscapes.

Along with a dozen prints, an array of complementary materials—sketches, bookplates, copies of Olave’s book After Hopper (The American Night) and others—are exhibited in three display cases to contextualise the project.

After Hopper culminates Olave’s three-decade career as a publisher of graphic works, during which he collaborated closely with Basque artists. Over this period, he has promoted around one hundred prints by Mikel Díez Alaba, Jesus Mari Lazkano, Daniel Tamayo, Alberto Rementería, Gentz del Valle, Chema Eléxpuru, Koldobika Jauregi, José Antonio Azpilikueta and Manuel García Seco that have never been made commercially available.