We seem to be obsessed with centennials. “David Smith: A Centennial,” currently on view at the Guggenheim, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth. At Washington’s National Gallery is an exhibition commemorating the centennial of Paul Cezanne’s death (1906) – which has always struck me as a rather morbid occasion for celebration. And a number of major exhibitions in Europe are honoring the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69). A little closer to home, in Poughkeepsie, is the modest though beautiful show “Grand Gestures: Celebrating Rembrandt,” which opens tomorrow at Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

Frankly, I don’t need an occasion to look at Smith, Cezanne, or Rembrandt. And I hate to think that we may have to wait another 100 years to see major shows of these titans again.But that’s all the more reason to rush out and see as much of them as we can.

Despite its overreaching title, “Grand Gestures,”curated by Patricia Phagan,is a well-chosen selection of nearly 40 of the artist’s works on paper. Comprising mostly prints, and one etching plate, from Vassar’s permanent art collection, the show also includes five loaned works, including two small, lovely drawings.

Rembrandt generally worked small (conditions prevented him from being granted grand religious commissions), yet he is among the most visionary and innovative of painters and printmakers, especially when it comes to exploring psychological and emotional depth through his figures’ expressions and through his use of light. In the 17th century, he single-handedly revived the medium of etching, imbuing his prints with an almost unbelievable variety of lines, tones, and pressures that, consequently, provide us with one of the richest and most astonishing ranges of color available anywhere in black and white. “Grand Gestures,” divided almost equally between secular and religious works, conveys the rich and infinite variety with which he put ink to paper.

Part of the struggle for viewers at any Rembrandt show is overcoming the feeling that the artworks were made by the hands of a god: How could a mere mortal produce light with such mysterious power, variety, and clarity? This feeling is especially acute with Rembrandt’s religious works. Then again, Rembrandt’s windmills, dogs, and trees – beggars and angels alike – feel touched by divine light.

In the dark and dramatic fourth state of the print “Christ Crucified Between the Two Thieves: The Three Crosses” (1653),Christ,a source of radiating light at the heart of the action, is the calm center of the storm. His light, which moves in an infinite variety of ways throughout the print,appears to hold off the imposing curtains of darkness encroaching from both left and right.

The mystifying “Hundred Guilder Print” (c. 1648), a combination of strangely overlapping scenes and stories from the life of Christ, is another miracle of light from the master of darkness. Christ, again radiating light, this time buttery soft, rises forth from the center of the image and hovers; he is both the source and carrier of the inexplicably glowing energy.

“The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds”(1634) is a powerful night scene of heaven and earth colliding. The print is diagonally structured so that two triangles, above and below, press against one another. Gabriel, backed by a host of cherubim, rides the clouds of heaven, which pour forth from out of a bright white opening, lit by God in the night sky. Gabriel is the largest figure in the image. He presses forward and over the shepherds and their startled livestock, the river, the forest, and the architecture – a flurry, worthy of Rubens,of suddenly illuminated movement in the darkness.

Other theatrical and well-known religious works in the exhibition include “The Triumph of Mordechai”(1639-41), “Christ Preaching (La Petite Tombe)” (1652-56), and “The Death of the Virgin” (1639). Yet other masterpieces – portraits,a self-portrait,landscapes,and genre scenes – are equally astonishing.

The portrait of the tax collector “Joannes Uytenbogaert, Receiver General of the Netherlands” (1639) transforms the sitter – whose head teeters on his neck as if balancing against the scales – and his topsy-turvy study into a grand metaphor for a world ruled by the balance, the quill, and the ledger. Uytenbogaert is dressed in fur, which makes him appear more animal than human. His hand takes a bag of gold from a man who kneels at his side like a supplicant. The bag looks like an internal organ, a kidney perhaps, and the hand, spring-loaded, grasps at the gold like the talons of a bird of prey. Sinister and biting, the print is as humorous as it is foreboding.

“Grand Gestures” is a magnificent, compact exhibition, though it is not the Rembrandt show that his 400th birthday deserves. It would be great if we could have honored him here in New York with a full-blown retrospective – but I am not complaining. Any show of Rembrandt, regardless of the occasion, is cause for celebration.

April 7 through June 11 (124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 845-437-5632).