Suzanne Perlman: Painting London, The Gallery 28 Cork Street

This will be a genteel occasion at 28 Cork St, but the paintings – mostly London landscapes – are bright and vigorous. Expect some warm scenes of London streets, parties in parks, music in Covent Garden. But also expect a dash of Whistler in a foreground jetty and moored boat, and a strong flavour of Austrian master Oskar Kokoschka.

Suzanne Perlman was born in Budapest in 1923. After having married (quite young) a stroke of remarkable luck and a forward-thinking Parisian friend saved Perlman and her husband from the fate that awaited Jews in central Europe during the Nazi era. They arrived in Paris only days before the occupation of Austria.

After France, the couple went to the Netherlands and then to a distant colony off the coast of South America: Curaçao. This warm, sensual island became home for many years and a multitude of paintings that Perlman created in this period still hang in its capital.

This exhibition will concentrate on Perlman’s depictions of another capital closer to home (though that Latin colour persists). Perlman has spoken of her delight at the frequent changes in mood and character offered to the observant painter by London. One day she was captivated by a tube station in Kilburn over which, she later learnt, Frank Auerbach had also mused.

Perlman had been part of an exclusive gang in the fifites that was taught by Oskar Kokoschka, one of the most important expressionist painters of the last century. Perlman’s ‘expressionist dash’ (in the words of art critic John Russel Taylor) revel in the Kokschka tradition. But Perlman’s city is her own vision. Her ferris wheel and carousel-laden London is part fairy tale, part Arcadia, part real life. There is some nice social drama going on in one fête sur l’herbe and a very theatrical Fire Eaters is firmly in the Sickert tradition (think Brighton Pierrots ).

Perlman is prolific and it’s good to see her varied depictions of London showing at such a prestigious address. A few doors up is one of the shrines of modernism in Britain – the Redfern Gallery . Perlman has previously exhibited (twice) at another Modernist hot spot, the Boundary, but this will be her most significant retrospective to date.

It promises to be a delightful exhibition and reminder of how, in talented hands, paint always makes you want to look at the world (and at London) again.