Water colours and oils by Karl Zerbe comprise the opening exhibition of the season at the Germanic Museum. Zerbe, a Munich painter, is one of the most talented of the younger artists in Germany and his work is to be seen in almost all of the chief museums of his native land. Although living in Cambridge at the present time, his work is little known in America and an exhibition in New York last spring was the first showing of his paintings in this country.

Zerbe is a complete modernist in his semi abstract style of paintings and his regard for the importance of the formal qualities of pictorial design. He is a typical German in the emotional intensity displayed in his work. The superb colour of the artist and his delicate touch are, perhaps, the most striking elements in his work. Using a special hand made Japanese paper for his water colours, he produces a soft delicate quality that is perfectly consistent with the subtle tone relations that are far more important to the eye than the subjects portrayed are to the mind. Colour is handled with perfect taste and design is thoroughly personal. Unlike so many of the moderns who imitate the great French masters of the late nineteenth century, Zerbe is thoroughly original, thoroughly himself, expressing an individ ualistic reaction to form and colour in a direct and unselfconscious manner.

Zerbe's softness is in no way oversweet and his delicacy is always masculine. He is not always delicate, however. In some of the large oils he paints with a vigour, a grandeur and a very real monumentality that shows his extraordinary versatility.

The exhibition will be open to the public from October 10th to November 4th.

--

Roger Gilman will give a gallery talk entitled, "A Group of Portraits--Copley to Trumbull" in the Balcony of the Fogg Art Museum on Tuesday, October 9, at 4 o'clock.