True To Life': Master Paintings at The Herbert

Chunks of nature, utterly raw, thrown onto the canvas and pulsating with life,'is Emil Zola's statement about the Impressionists. It is above the door of a new exhibition, 'True To Life' at The Herbert, Coventry city Museum & Art Gallery, Uk. 'True To Life' celebrates the evolving tradition of figurative painting with past and contemporary classics. If Zola's words were not enough, I was left in no doubt on entering this exhibition that I was in for a sensory visual feast. Major works by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Robert Lenkiewicz, Nahem Shoa and Desmond Haughton, together with the New British Realists stop you in your tracks. In the present critical climate a show like this feels revolutionary.