Art: Art in New York: Jan. 3, 1964

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ALBERT BLOCH—Goethe House, 1014 Fifth Ave. at 82nd. The only American to exhibit with German expressionism's Blaue Reiter group, Bloch returned to the U.S. in 1921, quietly settled down to teaching at the University of Kansas, where he died two years ago. Bloch's first New York exhibition in 37 years, which includes some of the Blaue Reiter works, reveals that the early, brooding Weltschmerz never left him. Alone and away from movements, however, he fashioned it into an individual theme. In paintings bathed with spectral moonlight, figures of darkness grope blindly through a lonely world, and harlequins act out a private grief in the eternal presence of death. Through Jan. 6.

ROBERT BÜCKER—Feigen-Herbert, 24 East 81st. Hard-edged icons by a 28-year-old New Yorker: polyptychs of oil on wood are marked with only an occasional economical line to suggest Romanesque pillars and arches. Bücker is delicate, antique, and trim enough a craftsman to be a builder of clavichords, also on view. Through Jan. 11.

COLETTE BANGERT—Krasner, 1061 Madison Ave. at 80th. Watercolors employing the touch of the pointillists and the spectrum of the impressionists limit themselves to the exploration of hidden lights. A warm incandescence radiates from flecks of contrasting opaque pigment veneered over squiggles like Hebrew calligraphy. First New York showing. Through Jan. 4.

BRUNO LUCCHESI—Forum, 1018 Madison Ave. at 79th. The new bronzes of this Italian-born New Yorker, a 1962 Guggenheim fellow, sparkle with candid spontaneity: washerwomen gossip over wet rags, a child quivers on stilts, a peasant Girl Tying Apron seems to be doing the twist. What continually threatens Lucchesi's suspended animations is a manneristic overdose of whimsy. Through Jan. 11.

FAY LANSNER—Kornblee, 58 East 79th. Though she considers her pastels mere preludes to the large oils so fashionable today, the artist is plainly a master, through her own swift stroke, of the chalky medium. When her female figures are multiplied in oils and blown up into 10-ft. canvases, they are stripped of intimacy, become stiff and frigid strangers lost in a roomful of mirrors. Through Jan. 4.

LORETTA HOWARD—Graham, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th. Passing from this traditional painter's deeply-hued, sonorous still lifes and oil portraits to the fresh air of her watercolored landscapes is like stepping from a musty drawing room into a brightly blowing summer's day. Through Jan. 4.

IAN WOODNER—Contemporaries, 992 Madison Ave. at 77th. A profusion of still lifes—cornflowers, roses, mums, larkspur —bloom from dainty Rorschach applications of watercolors by the builder-architect who designed the Central Park Zoo. Through Jan. 4.

EMILE GILIOLI and MICHEL ELIA—World House, 987 Madison Ave. at 77th. Fifty sculptures by two Parisians. The polished-bronze abstracts of Gilioli, formerly a blacksmith, are forged with a purity of line that is matched by Elia's virginal Arp-like marbles, which more immediately echo the human figure. Through Jan. 25.