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ART OF NEPAL—Asia House, 112 East 64th. The first major exhibition of Nepalese art spans 14 centuries. Limestone sculptures of classical simplicity, gilded idols adorned with precious stones, elaborate cloth paintings of mandalas, the Buddhist diagram for spiritual reintegration. Through Aug. 30.
PHILIP EVERGOOD—Gallery 63, 721 Madison Ave. at 63rd. American-born, English-educated (Eton, Cambridge). Evergood saturates his paintings with biting wit and sharp social commentaries. His sensuous figures are caught in a Rabelaisian revelry of human rapacity and foolishness. Among the oils, watercolors and drawings: a wistful Look Homeward, Marilyn. Through May 23.
MIDTOWN
PIET MONDRIAN—Frumkin, 32 East 57th. Mondrian depicted nature—before he stripped it to its bare essentials—in scenes of Dutch windmills, rivers and forests. These drawings and oils, done between 1905 and 1908, show keen insights and rhythmic vitality in a self-assured style, but offer little indication of the plastic purist he was to become (through May 23). For that, see "Mondrian, De Stijl and Their Impact," at Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th, where his spatial austerity and its potential for beauty is fully realized in his own and in the works of 22 followers. Through May 16.
ALBERT MARQUET—Knoedler, 14 East 57th. Matisse said of him: "He is our Hokusai." But Marquet, though cunning and concise with lines, was a painter more dexterous than daring. He was also well-traveled, painted the harbors of Hamburg, Le Havre, Naples, Algiers with a tourist's sweeping gaze, as well as Paris scenes. One hundred works cover 49 years. Through May 29.
MODEST CUIXART—Bonino, 7 West 57th. Spanish Painter Cuixart mixes his own concoction of materials, juxtaposes baroque designs with flesh-colored cubist construction. Sensuous red and black lines speak of darkness and calamity. Through May 23.
HUGH TOWNLEY—Pace, 9 West 57th. A Brown University art professor nails together all kinds of wood (walnut, oak, mahogany, cherry, maple, rosewood) and, with whalebone and horn, exploits the different shapes, grains and tones to endow his abstract anomalies with a curious vitality. Says he: "I want a thing that provokes and tantalizes and satisfies ... a bitchy piece of sculpture that lives." On view: 15 such pieces in relief and in the round. Through May 16.
WORLD'S FAIR ARTISTS—Parsons, 24 West 57th. Sculpture and paintings of ten U.S. artists whose murals adorn the exterior of the New York State Pavilion: Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Chamberlain, Kelly, Liberman, Indiana, Warhol, Rosenquist, Agostini, Mallary. Through May 23.
GEORGE ORTMAN—Wise, 50 West 57th. In "illuminations" and painting constructions, Ortman juggles signs and symbols into colorful allegories. Also drawings, prints, sculpture. Through May 23.
GEORGE SPAVENTA—Poindexter, 21 West 56th. New York Sculptor Spaventa's figures are malformed blobs of metal that look as if they were still taking shape—or beginning to melt. But his elongated, bulbous nudes are balanced firmly on broad bases, seem to grow naturally out of their own bulky substance. More than 60 small bronzes, also some drawings. Through May 16.