Modern America through the eyes of its artists

The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock is unveiled at the British Museum today.

Focusing on the period from 1900 to 1960, the exhibition comprises 147 works from a pool of 74 artists including John Sloan, Edward Hopper, Josef Albers, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

Stephen Coppel, the show's curator, said: "It begins in the early 1900s and finishes just before the emergence of pop art. The work produced was very interesting; the artists were commenting on what was going on around them.

"The works produced during the Depression, for example, were socially conscious and came out of the US government's relief programme."

The exhibition incorporates some of the key moments that helped form an American artistic identity.

It starts with Sloan's etchings of everyday urban life in the early 1900s and progresses to the works of Hopper and Martin Lewis, two former advertising men who depicted scenes from America's emerging cities. It ends with the more exuberant work of abstract expressionists Pollock and De Kooning.

The show charts the rise of the skyscraper — the symbol of modern progress and prosperity — the Jazz Age, the Depression, the effect of the rise of fascism in Europe, and America's entry into the Second World War.

It is drawn from a library of works including about 600,000 drawings and 2.5 million prints dating from the 15th century to the present day.

Mr Coppel said: "We have the most comprehensive collection of modern American prints outside the US and if we were to try to start this collection from scratch today, it would be impossible, both financially and logistically."

Next year, the exhibition will travel to galleries in Nottingham, Brighton and Manchester.

The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock is at the British Museum from tomorrow until 7 September.