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PAVEL TCHELITCHEW — Viviano, 42 East 57th. More than 300 of his works are at the Gallery of Modern Art (see below), but a rarer glimpse of the artist is given here. Friends have lent some 100 water-colors and drawings, many never exhibited, some personally inscribed. Included: Night and Day, a 1926 gouache-and-sand once owned by Gertrude Stein, who discovered him; portraits of Esme, the little girl in Hide-and-Seek; the cranial lattice work of his later years. Through April 18.
THEMES FROM SHAKESPEARE — Salpeter, 42 East 57th. A palettable painting party for his 400th birthday. Present: Antonio Frasconi's woodcut portrait of the poet; John Sennhauser's collage soliloquy, To Be or Not To Be; Philip Evergood's charcoal-and-wash of Macbeth and the witches; Mel Silverman's Will plastered against a 16th century papier-mache London; 16 other artists. Through April 30.
MONDRIAN, DE STIJL AND THEIR IMPACT — Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th.
When Mondrian set about destroying space, he replaced it with the golden-section grillwork that formed the cornerstone for abstract art. With his friend Van Doesburg he founded the magazine De Stijl, and, as shown here, spread the gospel of color geometries to Germany, Poland, Belgium, France, England, Scandinavia and the U.S. The most brilliant works of the master are missing, but the evolution of his spatial austerity is easily visible in early works and drawings, its potential for beauty stunningly manifest in such artists as Strzeminski, Vordemberge, Schwitters, Nicholson and others. Through May 16.
MARIO SCHIFANO — Odyssia, 41 East 57th.
The impatient brush of a young Italian new realist whips enamel paint around melanges of brown wrapping paper and canvas, laying waste a work of art with the gusto of a wild wind assailing a wall plastered with posters. Through May 2.
JEAN IPOUSTEGUY — Loeb, 12 East 57th.
Split skulls and bashed-in faces underscore the theme of violence in this French sculptor's first one-man show in New York.
Ipousteguy sculpts with a sure sense of balance and a sharp eye for basic paradoxes and brutal ironies, e.g., The Crab and the Bird which captures in one movement the rapport between crawling and flying. Fourteen black bronzes. Through April 18.
MARY BAUERMEISTER — Bonino, 7 West 57th. In the forefront of the frantic search for new materials, a young German artist creates sensuous surfaces with polished pebbles, drinking straws, hollow shells, wood. She proves with "linen sculptures" that look like modern abstractions of Grandma's old quiltwork that she can sew — and prettily, too. Through April 18.
VICTOR DE VASARELY — Pace, 9 West 57th.
The Hungarian-born painter, now a Parisian, recently won a Guggenheim award.
His calculated geometries are mechanical but their constant variation keeps the eye on the move, and his cool color harmonies send off winnowing waves of motion, like stones dropped in water. Through April 18.
JACK YOUNGERMAN — Parsons, 24 West 57th. Born in Cassius Clay's hometown, he shares some of the Louisville slugger's expansiveness. His enormous abstractions become arenas where mammoth forms-within-forms wage war with raw colors for attention and space. Through April 25.