UPTOWN

LATIN AMERICAN ART TODAY--Trinity School, 139 West 91st. In recent years the dialogue of modern art has broken down most language barriers (see listings for the Danes and Japanese below}. Any notion that the Latin Americans have failed to get the message is dispelled by this roundup of 17 accomplished painters from eight countries, among them Rufino Tamayo of Mexico, Alejandro Obregon of Colombia, Matta of Chile. Alejandro Otero of Venezuela and Wifredo Lam of Cuba. Through March 6.

DAVID ALFARO SIQUEIROS--New Art Center, 1193 Lexington Ave. at 81st. His huge mural left unfinished in Chapultepec Castle, Mexican Communist Siqueiros, 67, has for 31 years sat in prison serving time for "social dissolution." But the warden lets him paint, and his dancing brush creates images somersaulting and swirling far from a prison courtyard. Through Feb. 29.

ANDREMASSON--Saidenberg, 1035 Madison Ave. at 79th. This retrospective dates from 1923 to 1962. The works trek from cubism to surrealism, imitating Picasso among others, finally arrive at some of the most spirited and sophisticated lines in current painting. Through March 8.

NATHANAEL NEUJEAN--Contemporaries, 992 Madison Ave. at 77th. Thirty-three small pieces in rough bronze for a Belgian sculptor's first U.S. showing. Much of his work commemorates the victims of the Nazi pogroms and stands as a monument to their courage. He endows his figures with dignity in despair, casts them in small lonely groups bound together both by human oppression and the hidden force of their own humanity. Through March 7.

SALUTE TO DENMARK--Lefebre, 47 East 77th. Steering a course through folklore, these modern Danes find a fresh amalgam of fantasy and feeling, aptly tagged "abstractions which are living fables." Carl-Henning Pedersen. Asger Torn. Eljer Bille, Henry Heerup, Mogens Balle. Egill Jacobsen and Preben Woelck, most for the first time in the U.S. Through March 21.

LOUIS EILSHEMIUS--Lewison, 50 East 76th. He was by his own accounting, an author, dramatist, composer, librettist, globetrotter, womanologist, inventor and mesmerist. Eilshemius was also a gifted artist who suffered more than most from a fickle public. This centenary showing begins with a beautifully precise drawing done at twelve, runs through his stay in Samoa and concludes with 1909. when he was 45 and still unknown (he died in 1941). Also a collection of his letters, photographs, poetry. Through March 28.

WORKS FROM THE KYOTO HAMLET OF FINE ARTS--French & Co.. 978 Madison Ave. at 76th. In 1961 four young Japanese artists founded a colony in Kyoto, a city that for centuries has been the stronghold of traditionalist art. Their work is being shown for the first time in the U.S., together with that of three colleagues.

Viewers will not find much that is traditionalist; these are modernists concerned basically with materials, which may be tin cans, rope or boards for painting, teak and hollowed iron for sculpture. But their new language still bears the accent of their native culture. Through March 14.

MARISOL--Stable, 33 East 74th. Marisol's wooden oddballs have been alternately described as folk art, surrealist, Pop, even "poetic dislocations." Actually, these twelve new ones are simply the wackiest, wittiest melanges on view anywhere. Through March 21.

ROBERT D'ARISTA--Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. In his last painting show, this American University professor of art laid on paint like plaster of paris; for this one, he has tidied up his canvases and thinned his oils to a fine translucence. While he varies his use of texture, D'Arista is constantly concerned with chiaroscuro. His figures cast dark, subtle shadows on a curtain of white or emerge from darkness like apparitions. Through March 7.

BERNARD LORJOU--Hutton, 787 Madison Ave. at 67th. A lively show by a Parisian who has, in a one-man war against abstractionism, engaged in fistfights and lawsuits with his critics and sent his large, figurative paintings floating down the Seine on a barge. In these 28 oils, his colors are as breathtaking as ever, but the bizarre brutality has been transformed into a fierce emotionalism. White and yellow cathedrals blaze against midnight blue, flowers sputter and spout like painted fireworks, and marionettes look out with sad-eyed plaintiveness. Through March 14.

CARROLL CLOAR--Alan. 766 Madison Ave. at 66th. "The hypersensitive stillness at twilight is broken now and then by sounds that ride in from far off." Faulkner? No, Carroll Cloar, writing about what he paints. Faulkner's South is Mississippi, Cloar's Arkansas, but they are much the same: both are remembered through a homely yet sinister realism. Eighteen temperas. Through March 7.

GUITOU KNOOP--Emmerich. 17 East 64th. Balanced like birds poised to fly-- and just as graceful--are these 20 polished abstractions in marble, granite and bronze by a Russian-born sculptress who works in Paris. Through Feb. 29.

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC--Wildenstein. 19 East 64th. The hundredth anniversary of his birth is celebrated by this loan exhibition of 50 paintings, including six not seen before in the U.S. and 100 drawings, lithographs and posters. Through March 14.

JENNINGS TOFEL--Zabriskie. 36 East 61st. The first exhibition since the death in 1959 of this protege of Alfred Stieglitz takes a long look at the last 20 years of his career. During that time Tofel did not change much: he is always expressionist, always crowds his canvases with strange, misshapen humans and animals. His palette brightens, but the symbolism remains cloudy. Through March 7.

HANS HOFMANN--Kootz. 655 Madison Ave. at 60th. He has said he was nobody's student, but Hofmann was practically everybody's teacher. At 83, the dean of abstract expressionism still paints, and each year his shapes get gayer, his colors more delirious. Through March 7.

MIDTOWN

UMBERTO MASTROIANNI--Bonino, 7 West 57th. This major Italian sculptor (an uncle of Movie Actor Marcello Mastroianni) casts planks and lumps of bronze and gives the tortured results such names as Hiroshima, Violenza, Pearl Harbor. Together, they look like a junk heap of civilization from which blooms a brute mess of skulls, limbs and deformities: machine-age fleurs du mal. Through March 12.

TOM WESSELMANN--Green, 15 West 57th. One of the brightest, brashest Pop shows of the season. Ten specimens of Wesselmann's gleaming bathrooms, outdoor panoramas, the Stars and Stripes, and still more of his Great American Nudes. Through March 7.

EVELYN DRAPER--The Nippon Club. 143 West 57th. The Victorians mounted seaweed, the Japanese eat it, but Evelyn Draper paints with it. Utilizing the subtle colors of seaweed (as many as ten varieties in a picture) and its natural adhesiveness, she shapes the delicate filaments and threads on paper with a brush or sculpture tools. Her portraits, landscapes and figures have the delicacy of Oriental art. Forty works. Through March 2.

ADOLPH GOTTLIEB--Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th. The complete exhibition-- 45 oils--that won Gottlieb the Grand Premio at last fall's Sao Paulo Bienal. Through March 3.

ENNIO MORLOTTI--Odyssia, 41 East 57th. In the lush countryside around Milan, Morlotti finds the starting point for his art informel. He goos the canvas with thick layers of earthy colors, then gouges out gulleys and heaps up hills of pigment to express nature's dense, secretive and organic magic. Through March 7.

MUSEUMS

JEWISH--Fifth Ave. at 92nd. A retrospective of Pop Painter Jasper Johns, who hit the New York scene a scant six years ago with the subtlety of a Fourth of July celebration, causing a sensation with his Flags and Targets. The museum has them, along with more than 100 other paintings, drawings, sculptures, lithographs. Through April 12.

GUGGENHEIM--Fifth Ave. at 89th. A triennial survey of worldwide contemporary painting presents 82 artists from 24 countries. Through March 29.

METROPOLITAN--Fifth Ave. at 82nd. Seventy newly acquired prints including such masters as Goltzius, Rembrandt and Goya; the Cubiculum, a Pompeian bedroom buried for 18 centuries under cinders from Mount Vesuvius and recently restored by the museum; Dutch and Flemish paintings (33 Rembrandts), and the Met's superb collection of 19th and 20th century French paintings.

MUSEUM OF PRIMITIVE ART--15 West 54th. Ivory drums, carved canoe prows and paddles, dance shields and other objects from the Massirn region of New Guinea. Also 60 tempera paintings of primitive sculpture by Mexican Miguel Covarrubias, who, before his death in 1957, renounced a successful career as a muralist and caricaturist to become an important scholar of primitive art. Through May 10.

WHITNEY--22 West 54th. A double bill. "Maine and Its Artists" surveys the state of inspiration from 1710 to 1963, shows off an impressive roster of painters who were born in Maine or worked there, including Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Andrew Wyeth (through March 22). With them, Gaston Lachaise's sexy, soulful sculptures in stone and metal. Through April 5. Supplementing the Lachaise show, at Schoelkopf Gallery, 825 Madison Ave. at 69th: 15 plaster portraits of famous figures. Through March 14.

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