Visual Arts / Cezanne to Giacometti: highlights from Museum Berggruen Neue/ Nationalgalerie. At National Gallery of Australia until  September 21. Reviewed by KERRY-ANNE COUSINS.

The 1939 Herald and Weekly Times exhibition in Melbourne of 200 works by French and British contemporary artists introduced Australian audiences to Paul Cezanne and his fellow exponents of the modern art movements in Europe.

It must have been revelatory for visitors to the exhibition to experience art that they may have only seen in reproductions. The current exhibition at the National Gallery – Cezanne to Giacometti – generates the same air of excitement.

The works of Cezanne, Picasso, Klee, Braque, Matisse and Giacometti from the Berggruen collection are hung within a gallery space that includes Australian artists who were influenced by the new ideas and art movements in Europe. This proximity of works cleverly allows a visible connection between the European artists of the modern period and Australian modernists such as Grace Crowley, Dora Black, Grace Cossington Smith, Roland Wakelin and many others.

This global connection of culture and ideas between Australia and Europe is just one of the many discoveries to be made in the exhibition. In addition to the impressive collection of works by these major artists, some of the unexpected delights are Cezanne’s small studies and drawings. They include studies for his portrait of a pensive Madame Cezanne and a vivid study of a boy with a cap. They demonstrate a more expressive side of Cezanne’s creativity than his carefully planned pictorial space that characterizes his still life and landscape paintings.

There is a pleasing number of works by Paul Klee in the exhibition. They reveal an appealing and whimsical choice of subjects such as Red girl with yellow bowl-shaped hat.  His small geometric abstract works are a revelation with their jewel-like colours and textured surfaces.

Major works by Picasso include his iconic Cubist still life images. Intriguing however is the interesting insight into his early tempestuous relationship with artist Dora Maar. His deconstructed images of Maar in the exhibition are matched by Maar’s own portrait of Picasso hung nearby. Her riposte (All the portraits of me are lies. They are Picasso; none is Dora Maar) speaks for many artist’s models.

Matisse’s eloquent images of his models are perhaps not as well-known as his interiors and later paper cutouts but they are examples of his command of the expressive line in drawing. Matisse’s colourful lithographs from the limited edition portfolio, Jazz 1947, a costume he designed for the Ballets Russes production of The Song of the Nightingale as well as a painting of The Abduction of Europa, all from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection, add another level of local relevance and interest to the visiting works by Matisse.

The finale of the exhibition is a theatrical presentation of sculptures by Giacometti. His gaunt figures loom up dramatically in a darkened gallery but it is the feline grace of his elongated sculpture of a cat that remains as the last potent image to be savoured from this exciting, informative and utterly enjoyable exhibition.