The upcoming exhibition at Shanghai Museum East is the first time the Pola exhibits its collection in China, and is hailed as "the most ambitious overseas exhibition to date", according to Hiroko Noguchi, director of the Pola Museum.

The 69 paintings selected from the core collection of the Pola Museum encapsulate the pivotal era of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries in Western art history, Noguchi says. They span from seminal works of early French Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir and the masterpieces of groundbreaking post-Impressionists such as Paul Cezanne, Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who were revered as trailblazers by latter-day painters, to the epochal creations of 20th-century masters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse.

Although Shanghai Museum has showcased several Impressionist masterpieces in its past exhibitions, this will be the first time the institution presents a comprehensive, systematic and panoramic exhibition of the art form, which, arguably, had the most extensive impact on Chinese and Asian art, says Chu Xiaobo, director of the Shanghai Museum.