An establishment that has been called “a petite museum,” for their extensive collections of German Expressionist and French Impressionist paintings—whose catholicity of taste and selectivity through the years has made them one of the West Coast’s most important galleries, has organized a group exhibition of unusual interest. Among the German Expressionist painters whose works are displayed are Schmidt-Rottluff, Gabriele Munter, Erich Heckel, Ernst Nay, and George Grosz. There is an especially appealing still-life in watercolor with oil overpainting by Gabriele Munter who is best remembered for her paintings of multicolored flowers set in compositions of unusual arrangements, a style now called “Munteresque.” A Dunoyer de Segonzac, “Pasage a Grimaud, Provence,” with Cézanne references, and another still-life “Magnolia,” by Erich Heckel are in the German Expressionist section. A remarkable colorist, Ernst Nay is represented by a small work called “Abstract,” a gouache which thematically reflects much of the Expressionist preoccupation with African fetish symbology. George Grosz’s colorful “A World in Itself,” a still-life with a bright, oversized fish juxtaposed with a pipe and musical instrument, and in the background .a steamer, is nostalgic though decorative.

Jun Dobashi, A Franco-Japanese artist who lives in France paints abstractions which are a blend of ancient Japan and contemporary references. His “Eiffel Tower at Sunset” has patterns of rich oriental colored rhythms, and recurring motifs. The colors are arbitrarily incorporated and the scrubbed, almost dry brush technique is full of Japanese iconography. Not Expressionistic, his paintings somehow seem to have been done with similar fervor.

Four Raoul Dufy watercolors including “Regatta,” show the French artist at his atmospheric and colorful best. Reuven Rubin, dean of Israeli artists, who lives in Tel Aviv, where he is the nucleus of an art colony, has one of his poetic landscapes rendered in washes with a technique close to academic application but applied freely and with his characteristic draftsmanship.

A cross-section of schools and personal idioms by Americans are also displayed. Lyonel Feininger, veteran painter and graphic artist, is represented by several good though small watercolor-and-inks done in his typical style of vertical and disciplined Cubistic patterns held in delicate linear structures with small areas of pale washes.

Others are Richard Haines, Dan Lutz, Andrew Dasburg, Grigory Gluckmann and Millard Sheets, whose recent works include “Fog Above Loch Torridan,” a composition of oriental simplicity, and another of horses set against patterned areas with juxtaposition of designs against designs and less design. Rendered mostly in washes in earth tones this work, though decorative, seems contrived and highly reminiscent of a stage set. The most unexpected watercolor in the exhibit is sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein’s rhythmic, organic still-life of dark red roses rising from a rich blue-green spiral vase.

—Betje Howell