NEW YORK, N.Y.- A series of eight expressionist paintings by French-American artist Romain de Plas, 1971-2002, is now on view at the Museum of the City of New York through December 4, 2011. The highly-charged works portray the Towers in a range of modes from calm to agitated, suggesting rather than graphically depicting the chaos of the attacks. Shown in conjunction with photographs by Camilo Jose Vergara, who documented the World Trade Center for forty years, Romain de Plas’s paintings commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in this exhibition which has been on view since September 2, 2011.

Romain De Plas was born January 4, 1971, in Paris , France , and moved to New York City when still a child. He attended Brown University and went on to earn a degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston , in 1998. De Plas worked and for a time lived in a studio on Rivington Street in downtown Manhattan , which provided a view of the World Trade Center . Following the attacks, he worked in the early morning hours, trying to visually express the magnitude of the event and beginning what would become a series of 11 paintings. De Plas died suddenly on September 13, 2002, before he could bring his project to completion. The works on view serve as a meditation on the event and a tribute to the World Trade Center and those who died, some of whom were de Plas’s friends.

Although his work has been shown in Paris , Antwerp , and New York , the World Trade Center series has never before been exhibited.