La Cienega Area

New galleries are as commonplace as geraniums in Los Angeles’ art boom, but the latest debutante is up to something noticeably classic and cosmopolitan. The Fiorella Urbinati Gallery launches itself with a group of German Expressionist drawings, watercolors and prints by five masters of the style. It plans future shows of Picasso and early Chagall.

As works by such cornerstone European modernists become scarce, gallery offerings tend to suffer from diluted quality so it’s a pleasant to find museum-worthy sheets among nearly 50 on view. Kathe Kollwitz’s symbolic composition of helping hands reaching for a starving youth is a vintage example of her meaty draftsmanship and throbbing compassion. Oskar Kokoschka’s large head of a woman is right in the mainstream of his anxious, heartfelt portraits.

A nude by Egon Schiele appears to be dallying with herself. You wouldn’t hang it in the kids’ room but his juicy, nervously electrified line distills the feeling of an age when eros is all.

There are typical works by Otto Dix and George Grosz but their best are offbeat. Dix softens his surgical style in a lyric circus scene and Grosz surfaces submerged romanticism in a watercolor of a man diving in to save a drowning girl. (Fiorella Urbinati Gallery, 8818 Melrose Ave., to Oct. 15.)