EAST HAMPTON, NY.-On Saturday, August 9 from 5:30-7:30pm Guild Hall Museum will host the free opening public reception of Larry Rivers: Major Eearly WorksORKS. this exhibition celebrates the artist during the fifties and sixties when Rivers was a dynamic force and shining star of the New York Art World. During this period Rivers main themes focused on depicting history, family and friends often in controversial settings or poses that were capable of inspiring awe, rage and/or discomfort.

“This is a rare opportunity to experience many of the pivotal pieces of an artist who redefined the American Avante-Garde,” said Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Guild Hall Museum Curator. “Larry Rivers paintings and multimedia works compel an immediate visceral response. They are almost ceaseless in their demand for emotional engagement.”

The exhibition is the first show on the East End since Rivers death in 2002, and underscores his role in shaping art history. The work on view is loaned from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Larry Rivers Foundation; The Larry Rivers Estate; as well as, private collectors, and represent seminal pieces that are intentionally contentious and technically riveting. On view will be many of Rivers’ portraits of Berdie, including Double Portrait of Berdie, Berdie Seated, Berdie Reclining and two Fast Berdie Drawings. Additionally, there are the provocative historical narratives, including The Greatest Homosexual, The Last Civil War Veteran and the prodigious and powerful multi-media construction of History of the Russian Revolution. Other masterpieces include O’Hara Nude with Boots, Larry Rivers with Frank O’Hara, and Dutch Masters and Cigars III.

Rivers was a facile draftsman whose art work formed a connection between the Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s and Pop Art in the 1960s. He was fascinated by great painting and among his most noted paintings were his personal renditions of some of the world's classics. His oil paintings included the use of stencils, cutouts, blank canvas and image reversals many of these techniques first employed by Rivers, and later used by other artists, have become common in late 20th and 21st century art. Critic John Gruen said, “Early on, Rivers had developed a painting style he could call his own. It might be categorized as being semi-abstract, semi-realistic, pop-artish, post-romantic, or neo-classic. But whatever the label, it reflected an untrammeled imagination, an extraordinary draughtsmanship, a color sense that has no trace of garishness or vulgarity, and an innate vitality that springs from River’s own restlessness and reflects itself with charged up spontaneity, into whatever he paints.”

In the Guild Hall Boots Lamb Education Center there will be an exhibit of rare photographs, along with video and film of Larry at work and play. This is also on loan from the Larry Rivers Foundation.

Born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg, in 1923 in the Bronx, he became a jazz musician and changed his name while touring around the country. He was turned on to painting while playing with fellow musician Jack Freilicher, husband of the artist Jane Freilicher. After being honorably discharged from the Army for medical reasons, Larry studied in New York and began exhibiting. He was influenced by life-long friends such as the poets Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch, among others.

In support of the exhibition there are many Public Programs. On Sunday, August 10 at 11:00am there will be a Panel Discussion: “I Remember Larry” with collector, Barbara Goldsmith; author, John Gruen; director of the Larry Rivers Foundation, David Joel; film director, Lana Jokel; and, artist, Jane Wilson; moderated by Bob Colacello, the former editor of INTERVIEW magazine, who promised the dialogue will be very animated and punctuated with entertaining stories about Rivers, his life and his work as a musician, artist, poet, teacher, television writer, nightclub M.C. and game show contestant. Later, at 1:00pm that afternoon, there will be a book signing in the Museum by John Gruen, author of the memoir “Callas Kissed Me…Lenny Too.”

On Saturday, August 23 at 3:00pm there will be a Gallery Talk by Guild Hall curator, Christina Mossaides Strassfield. On Sunday, Sept 27 at 3:00pm, Helen A. Harrison, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center will give a lecture on “Larry Rivers: Life into Art.” All are free with admission to the museum.

Additional Public Programs include a Naked Stage Presentation of “The Art of Love” Poems by Kenneth Koch, who was a long time friend of Larry Rivers, on Saturday, September 20 at 7pm. Guild Hall will also feature two films: “Larry Rivers: Public and Private” by Lana Jokel that will run on the following Saturdays at 3:00pm: August 16, September 13, and Saturday, October 11 and “Pull My Daisy,” a short film that typifies the Beat Generation, which will run on the following Sundays at 3:00pm, August 17, September 14, and October 12.