Mari Lyons: Memorial Exhibition – Press Release

The Vital Street

Upper Broadway from Her Studio

January 30 – February 24, 2018

Broadway Vertical III

Broadway Vertical III, oil on canvas, 78 x 55 inches, 2010

Reception: Thursday, February 1, 5 – 8pm

“What I want most for my paintings,” Mari said, “is vitality” – and she found in the electric, ever-changing scene below her studio the perfect cognate for her vision. For forty years she worked in a third-floor space on the corner of Broadway and 80th Street, above the old H&H Bagel Shop, across from Zabar’s. She painted the still life, studio interior, figure, and much else, but remained captivated by and regularly drew from the vital street below – the endless swarm of vehicles and people, the changing shops and architecture, the passing seasons. She found the remarkable richness of the scene inexhaustible.

She first exhibited her cityscapes in the late 1980s, and then several times later, and in a two-person exhibition with John Dubrow at Rider University, curated by Deborah Rosenthal. The series was praised in Forbes FYI, and by Lance Esplund, David Cohen, John Seed, and Jed Perl. The Museum of the City of New York acquired a large street scene and recently the New York State Museum in Albany acquired six other “cities.”

These “sprawling, brushy compositions” are perhaps Mari’s most exciting and successful series – and register the full force of her exuberant love of color and motion and her intrepid commitment to a painterly figuration counter to so much recent conceptual painting.

See more of Mari Lyon’s work at www.marilyonsstudio.com.


MARI LYONS (1935-2016) STUDIED AT MILLS COLLEGE (with Max Beckmann and Fletcher Martin), Bard College (Louis Schanker, Ludwig Sander, Stefan Hirsch), BA, Atelier 17 (Stanley William Hayter), the Grand Chaumiere, Yale-Norfolk Art School (Bernard Chaet, Gabor Peterdi), and Cranbrook Academy of Art (Zoltan Zepeshy, Madison Fred Mitchell), MFA. She exhibited widely throughout the country and one of her Montana landscapes traveled to Tunis as part of the Art in Embassies Program of the U.S. Department of State. Her work is represented in Climate Central Foundation, The Museum of the City of New York, Montana State University Library, Rider University, the DeGolyer Library (SMU), The New York State Museum (in Albany), Montana Museum of Art (Missoula), and elsewhere, and in more than 120 private collections.

She had fifteen one-person shows at First Street Gallery in New York City, along with one and two-person shows at Rider University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Kirkland Art Center in Clinton (NY), Windham Fine Arts in Windham (NY), Polari Gallery in Woodstock (NY), Bowery Gallery (NYC) and the Forsythe Gallery in Ann Artbor (MI).

Mari was married to the writer and book publisher Nick Lyons and their family includes four children and four grandchildren. She maintained studios in New York City and Woodstock, New York. She died April 3, 2016.

www.marilyonsstudio.com.