Every summer, Hollis Taggart serves up a rotating exhibition of its latest acquisitions of American Modernist art. (Individual works are liable to be sold and replaced by others during the course of the exhibition.) The highlights of these installations are often the surprises: the eye-catching works of unfamiliar artists, or atypical pieces by well-known ones. Currently, a number of intriguing pieces are on view, most of them interwar paintings that show American artists struggling to cast off the hegemony of the School of Paris, with varying degrees of success.

Four paintings by Alfred Maurer (1868–1932) span his mature years. Despite their differing styles, all share an air of sensitive resolve. It’s tempting to connect this to his tragic life; in his late 30s, he abandoned a highly successful, Whistler-esque style for Fauvism, and then struggled for many years with a less receptive public — and a disapproving father — before eventually taking his life. A landscape from around 1914, though, shows the artist in cheerful full-swing, his vivid, freely applied colors suggestive of a feathery Matisse. Though lacking the intense spatial contradictions of the French master, Maurer’s palette of orangey pinks, deep greens, and cerulean blues vibrantly locates foreground trees, a hayfield, and distant, mounting clouds. A more somber-hued, Cubistic still life (c. 1928–32) demonstrates his agile eye for composition; though uptilted in semi-abstract fashion, the table persuasively supports an array of items, including the striking detail of a fish bisecting the perfect circle of a plate. Another still life (c. 1930) reflects a different approach — and perhaps a touch of humor, too — with a colorful, prismatic array of planes surrounding a single, dainty croissant.

Bob Thompson (1937–1966), who painted for a mere eight years before his premature death, resists easy classification. His expressionistic fervor and enthusiasm for the traditional masters put him utterly at odds with the contemporary trends of Minimalism and Pop. A solid grasp of design nevertheless undergirds “The Tempest” (1965), his updating of Giorgione’s masterpiece that transcribes the original into a rainbow scheme of color. Here, the standing male figure has become a flat pillar of deep, fiery red, the nursing woman a plane of sky blue. Despite their hallucinatory hues, they occupy their places with a degree of authority, demonstrating the peculiar discipline in Mr. Thompson’s freewheeling attack. Though his star has fallen considerably in recent decades, John Graham (1886–1961) was an eloquent advocate for modernism in the ’30s, and a powerful influence on some of the up-and-coming Abstract Expressionists. His succession of painting styles — Surrealist, Cubist, Neoclassical — reflected the temperament of a flamboyant poseur. Many of his works simmer, however, with a unique formal vigor. With acid yellows, humming pinks, and deep reds, blues, and greens, his “Daffodils in a Vase” (1928) palpably captures the eruption of blossoms from their sturdy container.

For nearly a decade in the 1930s, Hans Burkhardt (1904–1994) studied and shared a studio with Arshile Gorky in New York City. Burkhardt subsequently moved to California, where he gained a reputation for expressionistic antiwar paintings. At Hollis Taggart, his early still life from 1939, while clearly derivative of Picasso, compellingly catches the weight of light descending on a tumbler and opened book. Down the wall hangs an equally Cubistic 1930 still life by Konrad Cramer (1888–1963); though brimming with stylistic verve, it feels relatively decorative in its placid placement of fruit, bowl, and jugs.

One of the most startling paintings here is the handsome “Violin Player” (1939), an early painting by David Park (1911–1960). Its crisp ochre and gray planes, and savvy formal rhythms — with double curves repeating in both violin and figure — are striking, and yet more elegant than soulful. It leaves one hankering for the rough but affectionately hewn figures of his pioneering 1950s paintings. Of all the works here, three small paintings by Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) may represent the most seamless merging of European and American trends. These spirited works from the ’40s show the artist moving toward total abstraction, filling his surfaces with broad, frank swipes of the brush, yet still balancing and counterbalancing forms. They could be stepping-stones to the classic Hofmanns of the late ’50s, with their weighty, turgid blocks of color. The outlines of a vase are apparent in the earliest, which dates from 1942, and several unidentifiable objects inhabit the second, from 1944. By the third, produced in 1948, all pretense of representation has vanished, subsumed in the swirling oppositions of color and line.

Until Labor Day (958 Madison Ave., between 75th and 76th streets, 212-628-4000).