Wednesday, Oct 21, 2009
Rider University will host an exhibit of paintings by artists Charles Cajori and Barbara Grossman entitled Cajori/Grossman: Forming the Figure from November 5 to December 6 in the Rider University Art Gallery, located on Rider’s Lawrenceville campus at 2083 Lawrenceville Road. The exhibit will open with a reception on Thursday, November 5, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Art Gallery, and Grossman will again meet patrons for a Gallery Talk on Thursday, November 12, at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
This two-person exhibit by husband and wife will show opposing ways to approach the drawing and the painting of the figure.
Charles Cajori arrived in New York City in 1946. There, he studied at Columbia University for two years before joining the Abstract Expressionist movement. Cajori has always drawn directly from nature, but at one time was totally abstract. He eventually began to focus on the female figure, creating images that reveal gestures or simple actions. Cajori has taught for more than 50 years at such schools as the University of California – Berkeley, Cooper Union, Queens College and the New York Studio School, which he helped found in 1964.
Cajori has exhibited his work extensively in such New York venues as David Findlay Jr. Fine Art, Lohin-Geduld Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, as well as in the National Academy of Design and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum of Art in Washington, D.C.
Barbara Grossman is also a figurative painter, whose figures in interior paintings explore both space and sharing color with complex patterns and implied narrative. She graduated from Cooper Union in 1965 and two years later, was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Grant to study in Germany. Grossman was a founding member of Bowery Gallery in New York, where she exhibited for 37 years.
Grossman has taught as an adjunct at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, the New York Studio School, the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University and American University. She has exhibited her work in such venues as The National Academy of Art in New York, the New York Studio School, the Bowery Gallery and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., as well as the Gross McCleaf Gallery and the Mangel Gallery, both in Philadelphia.
Grossman’s work is in the collections of the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, Bryn Mawr College, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Academy of Design in New York.
Cajori/Grossman: Forming the Figure is funded in part by a grant from the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State.
The Rider University Art Gallery, located on the second floor of Rider’s Bart Luedeke Center, is open Tuesday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.