Hamptons Fine Art Fair 2023

Matthew Swift Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Peter Lyons at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, which opens in Southampton, New York, with a private preview on Thursday, July 13, and continues with public hours Friday – Sunday, July 14–16.

Matthew Swift Gallery will exhibit ten oil paintings by Lyons in Booth 366 and have additional paintings by Lyons on location. Lyons is a Spotlight Artist of the fair.

The exhibition will be the public debut of Lyons’s newest major work, a monumental painting 50 x 96 in. entitled Café, Friday Morning, Querétaro, Mexico, which continues the artist’s series of paintings inspired by the architecture of cities in Mexico. The exhibition includes two more monumental paintings in the series, which he began in 2020: Botica, Querétaro, Mexico (2021, 42 x 78 in.) and Coyoacán, Mexico City (2023, 50 x 60 in.), the first of several paintings in progress in which the Lyons moves toward squarer formats. A group of five smaller paintings includes one in the Mexico series, Saturday Morning, Querétaro, Mexico, (2020, 14 x 26 in.) and two architectural paintings which pre-figure the disciplined compositions of the Mexico series, building facades shown straight on over cobbled streets and sidewalks: Providence RI (2019, 14 x 24 in.) and Department Store (2018, 14 x 24 in.). The fifth in this group, I-90, Natick, Massachusetts (2018, 14 x 24 in.), emphasizes the surrealist dimension to Lyons’s work and the degree of intention and control with which Lyons renders perspective in his paintings of architecture and the built environment, even when the perspective appears straightforward. Complementing the architectural paintings are two nocturnes, Milky Way (2014, 14 x 24 in.), and a superb example of Lyons’s earlier work, Elements (2004, 36 x 72 in.). Rounding out the exhibition is the remarkable Threshold (2019, 36 x 60 in.), whose intense colors and luminescent storm clouds, hovering between metaphor and depiction, invoke feelings of sublime awe at vast and strange celestial power.

For passes to the fair, please contact the gallery.

Seven additional paintings are in Southampton and may be viewed with notice at the fair or outside of the fair: