“BLUES OF THE RUBY MATRIX”: This 1958 oil painting is part of “George Segal: Themes and Variations,” on view through July 31 at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick. An opening reception is on January 27 from 4 to 7 p.m. (Courtesy of the George and Helen Segal Foundation)

Marking the centennial of George Segal’s birth in 1924, the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers–New Brunswick welcomes visitors to experience more than 60 works, some familiar, others rarely seen, in “George Segal: Themes and Variations.” The exhibition, on view through July 31,  highlights not only the breadth of Segal’s work, but also the people and the state that helped to shape his career.

The public is invited to a free opening reception at the Zimmerli on Saturday,  January 27 from 4 to 7 p.m.

With works drawn from the Zimmerli’s collection, as well as loans from the George and Helen Segal Foundation and private collections, the exhibition offers the opportunity to view Segal’s less well-known paintings, drawings, and photographs alongside his renowned life-sized plaster cast figures. In addition, photographs by Arnold Newman and Donald Lokuta capture Segal in his studio, providing insights into the artist as not only maker, but also curator who arranged the sculpture in his studio to convey connections across time and theme.

“This exhibition explores George Segal’s significance in art history, guiding his generation from abstraction back to realism,” said Maura Reilly, director of the Zimmerli. “It also reinforces the significant role that Rutgers — where he received his M.F.A. — and New Jersey played in the art world during the second half of the 20th century.”

Raised and educated in New York City, Segal (1924-2000) relocated in the 1940s to a central New Jersey farm, which remained his home and studio for the rest of his life. In the 1950s and 1960s, Segal was among the avant-garde community of artists in Lower Manhattan, many of whom became his friends and mentors.

The exhibition is structured to explore significant themes that Segal returned to throughout his career — figural groups, single figures, the nude, portraits, and still life. In addition, a group of Segal’s early expressionistic paintings from the late 1950s that won him renown as a young painter, but ultimately were left behind as he focused more intensely on sculpture, are included. Segal’s early paintings and figural sculptures, for which he is now best known, were focused on efforts by the artist to combine physical (visible) and emotional (invisible) subject matter.

With a gift of Johnson & Johnson’s new plaster bandages, Segal soon realized his signature technique of plaster cast figures, which he debuted in the historic “New Realists” at Manhattan’s Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962. Though it was the first major Pop art exhibition, Segal stood out for his ability to portray human psychology, rather than consumerism and pop culture.

Segal also examined his love of art history and used still life to update the modernist still lifes of his favorite artists and his everyday experience. He was fascinated by Paul Cézanne’s ability to reimagine space and recreated one of the 19th-century artist’s still-life paintings in painted plaster. Segal also immortalized contemporary subjects from familiar places. The plaster sculpture Paint Cans with Wainscoting (1983) offers a vignette of items in his studio that suggests the artistic experiments of Robert Rauschenberg, Jean Follet, and Richard Stankiewicz, who also incorporated non-precious materials into their sculpture and assemblages. Segal, who loved to visit New Jersey diners, created a series of drawings and sculptures with table settings from the iconic local restaurants that he frequented.

Exhibition-related programs feature an interdisciplinary panel of scholars, including Rutgers faculty, about Segal and the topic of anti-monumentality, as well as two figure drawing workshops. Details are posted on the museum calendar.

Admission is free to the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, located at 71 Hamilton Street (at George Street) on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick.  For more information, visit zimmerli.rutgers.edu.