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Lewis Rubenstein is best known for his paintings and graphic works which record his immediate surroundings in the mid-Hudson Valley, as well as his extensive travels throughout Europe, Mexico and Japan. With a delicate and determined touch, Rubenstein has transformed the Hudson River's scenic vistas into a series of memorable watercolors such as Ashokan, Iona Island, Coming Storm, and Bear Mountain. For over fifty years, he has vividly portrayed Poughkeepsie's picturesque streets and charming older neighborhoods with an honesty and integrity that says as much about the character of the artist as it does about the city itself.
Lewis Rubenstein: A Hudson Valley Painter presents a fascinating tour through the life and work of one of the region's most distinguished and widely-respected artists. After graduating from Harvard College in 1930, Rubenstein studied true fresco painting in Italy and attended the Academie Moderne in Paris. He returned to the States with the ambitious goal of becoming a muralist and a deep commitment to using his art to effect social and political change. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s he received commissions for murals from Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum and the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture. In 1940 he assisted the Mexican artist, Jose Clemente Orozco, with his fresco for an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1939 he moved to Poughkeepsie to join the art department at Vassar College and later headed its studio art program. His dedication to teaching a wide range of creative ideas and a variety of technical skills inspired hundreds of students.
Beginning in the late 1940s Rubenstein originated the idea of Time Painting and later developed the concept into a wholly personal means of expression. Using the horizontal format of Asian scrolls encased in a specially designed viewing frame, the artist composed a sustained visual theme in time as well as in space. Time Painting offered Rubenstein the opportunity to fuse two traditions - Western European and Far Eastern scroll painting. The result of this synthesis is an art that appears almost improvisational, yet is highly disciplined and deliberately planned and executed.
