LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ -- A retrospective exhibition of paintings by Louisa Matthiasdottir, one of America's foremost painters, will be held in the Rider University Art Gallery, located in the Student Center on the University's Lawrenceville campus, from March 26 to April 22.

A panel discussion entitled "Still Life, Landscape, and the Figure," and opening reception will be held on Monday, March 30 at 6 p.m. in the gallery. Jed Perl, art critic for New Republic Magazine, will moderate the panel discussion. The exhibit comprises some 20 works on canvas and paper. A color catalog will be available at the exhibition.

Born in Iceland in 1918, Matthiasdottir studied in Denmark and Paris before coming to New York in 1943 where she studied at the famous Hans Hofmann School. She began showing her paintings after the war at the downtown Jane Street Gallery in New York. For many years she had regular exhibitions at the Robert Schoelkopf Gallery on Madison Avenue. She is now represented by the Salander-O'Reilly Gallery in New York, which made both the catalog and the group of her works from which this exhibition was selected.

Curating this show is Dr. Deborah Rosenthal (right), professor of art at Rider and a New York painter and critic.

Matthiasdottir's kitchen still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and Icelandic landscapes have received extensive critical and popular attention. Writers on art from Hilton Kramer to John Ashbery have discussed her work, in such venues as The New York Times and New York Magazine.

"Matthiasdottir's paintings have been praised for their lucidity, for her Hofmann-like feeling for the spatial potential of the flat rectangle, married in her canvases to a sharp eye and quick brush applied to the observed detail," said Dr. Rosenthal.

Matthiasdottir's paintings and pastels are in many public and private collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum, the Trenton State Museum, and the collection of the Chemical Bank in London and New York. Other versions of this retrospective exhibition have been shown at the Mayer Museum in Charlottesville, VA and at the American University in Washington, D.C., among other venues.

Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 2 to 8 p.m. and Friday through Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. For more information, contact Dr. Rosenthal at (212) 595-1417.

Rider University's Lawrenceville campus is located five miles south of Princeton and three miles north of Trenton on Route 206 in Lawrence Township, NJ. The campus is one-half mile south of exit 7A of Interstate 95.