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International Herald Tribune, Saturday-Sunday, October 23-24, 1971 [[image]] of the mind, then their representation is fairly directly accessible. The esoteric details may be interesting but one can also do without them. Here, the durable realities depicted by Dürer are in a sense beyond commentary. But one senses the nature of his theme and one can of course express it: the sadness surrounding any power and ability to remain sterile, the tension within any soul that has all means to act and yet expects the goal to be given by another force than his own. Dürer has the extraordinary faculty of taking any allegorical theme - and the two subjects I have described are essentially that - and infusing them with a passion, an intense immediacy so great that they can invade our own reality, awaken echoes and turbulences there and cast their disquieting light upon it. Very occasionally one senses an influence of the somewhat mannered postures he discovered in Italian art during his journeys. But that is accidental, and he is also indebted to them for the sometimes monumental qualities of his figures. What is fundamentally his own is the inward urgency, intensity and purposefulness of every single character he depicts. His vision is sometimes harsh and bitter, sometimes numinous and solemn, sometimes almost tender and serene. It is always strangely paradoxical, at the same time burning and freezing, a reflection of the clash of forces within the artist himself - no doubt of his Germanic Gothicism and his enthusiasm for the luminous world then dawning to the South - but of other forces too. He is cruel - like the angel with a priggish smile that flies over the four horsemen of the apocalypse in one of his prints - and derives a spiritual satisfaction from observing and depicting the cruelties of destiny. He is narcissistic and ambitious in the extreme. But his complex talent integrates and rises above all this. If he takes the aesthetic delight in the destiny that kills he also knows he is the creature nipped in the bowels at every turn by the leering reminders of death. He is fiercely objective and passionately subjective, and his peculiar genius results from this fundamental duality of spirit that makes his art at once the voice of man and the voice of destiny. And this, rather than any accidental anniversary, is what gives his work its particular relevance today. Art in Europe A Tribute to Balla in Homage to Balla, Qui Arte Contemporanea, 525 Via del Corso, Rome, to Nov. 6. A comprehensive Balla show is long overdue. However, this one offers only a few examples of work by this active, courageous innovator, one of the leaders of futurism. "Primavera", an oil done in the '20s, is an abstraction of burgeoning shapes and tendrils, oddly sinuous, and, in time and feeling, strangely related to the paintings of Stella, Demuth and Cove, loners in America. A landscape of summer trees seems built of fretted segments; a seascape is beautifully patterned and in constant, fluid motion. There is also a group of small works, intelligent drawings and gouaches. After exhibiting in honor of the master are several contemporary Italians. Theirs is a show apart. Biasi might be closest to Balla in spirit; Strazza is his usual serious, classic self; and Morales, big and forceful. Neither they nor the others match Balla's inventive vitality. In fact, they do themselves an injustice in that they appear tame and limited when seen in the light of Balla's clarity and verve. *** Ion Mitrici, S.M.13, 18 Via Margutta, Rome, through October. Mitrici's neat, repeated designs of equal elements build up to patterned abstractions in sober, pale materials. The sculptures and reliefs of this Romanian are balanced and intricate. The recent paper cutouts are the best - and the less symmetrical they are the more ingenious. *** Henry Moore, Etchings. Toninenlli, 86 Piazza di Spagna, Rome, through October. Moore's concern with hollows that shape form from the inside is least academic here. Instead of imagined figures, pierced by arbitrary holes, he uses real elephant skulls as starting points. Most of the 28 etchings, all recent, are energetic crosshatchings of thick bone, joints and shadows, pressing against and into each other. But some front and side views of skulls, drawn with simple, scraggly line are the most carefree. -Edith Schloss. Paris Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris 8, to Nov. 14. Nearly 1,000 entries, plus an important selection of works by Gromaire, sections devoted to architecture and the stage, to Brazilian and Polish artists, to the avant-grade Iris Clert Gallery, etc. Conservative and not so conservative material and lots of rather gimmicky stuff. *** Art Populaire Fantasique du Mexique, Galerie Jacques Casanova, 21 Galerie de Montpensier, Palais Royal, Paris 1 to Oct. 30. A good collection of dazzlingly painted devils from Mexico. The current popular art of this country seems to have been inflected by the popular magazine representations of prehistoric beasts. *** Cartier, Gunter, Reid, American Cultural Center, 3 Rue du Dragon, Paris 6, to Nov. 15. Three American artists with very different styles: Cartier applies his acrylic in large informal areas of bright, rather sweet color; Gunter's work is carefully realistic, with occasional poetic license; Reid's work suggests an informal surrealism with such subjects as "Figure 8 on the Beach." *** Ado, Galerie Arnaud, 212 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris 6, to Nov. 6. Ado has adopted a hard edge module that has a geometrical shape roughly like that of Piazza Navona. This module is constantly reappearing in his work either in hard edge variations or in contrasting, sometimes photographic settings. *** Krasno, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes, 58 Rue de Richelieu, Paris 2, to Nov. 6. Argentine artist Krasno now works exclusively with paper paste that he molds into reliefs, sometimes high-reliefs, to produce subjects that are sometimes not unrelated to surrealist humor. The technique is quite unusual and the results can be effective. --Michael Gibson Madrid Molezun, Galeria Juana Mordo, 7 Villanueva, Madrid, to Nov. 6. Molezun's paintings are like compositions, broken up, then put together again with the result better than the original. There are nuances here, a splash of daring there -- his favorite colors are black, orange-red and white. *** Millares, Galeria Egan, 29 Villanueva, Madrid, to Oct. 30. These black and white drawings and lithographs show what an expert Millares is. His tight, yet uncrowded compositions dance and dart across the paper with a strong, firm line. His dark masses throb with excitement, much more so than his more widely known collages. 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