An exhibition of cityscape paintings by New York artists John Dubrow and Mari Lyons opened at Rider University’s Gallery on November 2 and will continue through December 7. Comprised of very large oils and smaller painted studies, “Home-Street-City,” was curated by Deborah Rosenthal, professor of fine arts at Rider, a New York painter and writer on art.

The exhibition takes a look at the poetics of urban space and forms through the work of two artists rooted both in perception and modernist abstractions of the city. The curator titled the exhibition after Piet Mondrian’s rich and enigmatic essay of 1926, in which he presents the ideal city and also the city as ideal. The show, and the special in depth look at the exhibition planned for November 9, bring together two rather different sensibilities united by their love of modernism and their fascination with the city.

"Thursday Afternoon on West 80th Street" by Mari Lyons

Mari Lyons is a painter who has shown her work for more than three decades in New York, mostly at the First Street Gallery. She studied with Léger, Stanley William Hayter, and with Beckmann. Among the many collections in which her work is represented is the Museum of the City of New York, which owns one of her large cityscapes.

John Dubrow has painted in a number of cities around the world, including New York and Paris. Having studied with Bruce McGaw in San Francisco, he came to New York, where he has shown at the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries and now at Lori Bookstein Fine Art. Both artists have been widely discussed by critics, and both have written statements that are included in the illustrated color catalog that accompanies “Home-Street-City.”

On November 9, a conference will be held at the exhibition. The schedule is as follows:

• 4:30 to 6 p.m. Panel Discussion, “Views of the City”—moderated by the poet Peter Campion, author of “Other People,” with participants Professor Marshall Berman, CUNY, author of “On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square;” the artists; Jed Perl, art critic, “The New Republic,” author of “New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century;” and the curator, Deborah Rosenthal.
• 6 to 7:30 p.m., reception for the artists and film, “Climate of New York,” by Rudy Burckhardt
• 7:30 p.m., “Art, Artists, and the City,” a talk by Jed Perl in the Cavalla Room of the Bart Luedeke Center.

All events are free and open to the public.

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