What's On at Europe's Museums

Monet's Garden in Zürich

The Kunsthaus Zürich is showing a comprehensive exhibit on the gardens in Claude Monet's painting. The show comprises 70 paintings, as well as photographs and letters from every phase of the creation of his works. Included are early Impressionist oil paintings as well as his later, monumental serials, all gathered and presented together for the first time. Among the works are major paintings from a number of European museums and seldom-shown masterpieces from private Swiss and American collections.

Monet's Garden is showing through February 27, 2005. The Kunsthaus Zürich is open Tuesday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Karel Appel & Co. in Brussels

Conceived as a journey, this exhibit draws the viewer on a trip through the history of Dutch art. The works of Karel Appel (born in 1921) is the thematic thread. The tour guide on the journey is the curator, Rudi Fuchs, who previously directed Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. The works of Karel Appel and many of his regional contemporaries -- including members of the 1950s-era CoBrA (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) group of Abstract Expressionists -- are presented, juxtaposed with portraits, landscapes, and still-lifes of the great Dutch Masters. Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck are joined by later greats such as James Ensor and Piet Mondriaan. Whether or not their time tested works outshine the more avant-garde Appel is for the viewer to decide.

Itinerary: Rudy Fuchs' Journey to the Heart of Dutch Art runs through January 13. The Musee des Beaux Arts (Bozar) is open from Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Thursday until 9 p.m.

Russian Avant-Garde Painters in Berlin

George Costakis is known as one of the most important art collectors of the 20th century. In Russia as a diplomat during the 1950s and 60s he purchased works of Russian avant-garde artists in whom no one seemed to be interested at the time; today these make up the Costakis Collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. Berlin is the only stop in Germany for this exhibition, which comprises some 320 works, as well as archive material, of around 50 artists. It represents all of the different movements within the Russian avant-garde from 1900 to 1943, focusing on the movement's obsession with the use of light and color.

Color and Light in the Russian Avant-Garde: The Costakis Collection is on view through January 10, 2005. For opening times of the show at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, contact

post@gropiusbau.de.

Sculpture's Precarious Realism

Photography, new technologies and the media have seemingly banished all corporeality and materiality from the arts. The exhibit "Sculpture -- Precarious Realism between the Melancholy and the Comical" sets out to prove that realism is being celebrated in recent sculptural work. But its a realism that sets reality on its head, in a manner that is fragile, grotesque, crazy, provocative. In short, precarious. The works present themselves as searching for what is hidden behind classical, beautiful appearances, depicting refractory but animated worlds of objects, shapes and forms that seem to have escaped from some netherworld, heavenly apparitions, cosmos of internalized fantasy.

Sculpture -- Precarious Realism between the Melancholy and the Comical runs through February 20, 2005. The Vienna Kunsthalle is open daily except Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursdays to 10 p.m.

Tiepolo Paintings in Budapest

Budapest's Museum of Fine Art (Szépmüvészeti Múzeum) is showing works by Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), the oldest son of the famous Giovanni Batista Tiepolo. Most of the 60 etchings, four drawings and eight paintingscome from the collection of Hungary's royal Esterházy family. They are being shown to mark the occasion of 200th anniversary of the death of Giandomenico Tiepolo. Giandomenico Tiepolo poked fun at his own times with a biting and sharp humor.

The exhibit runs through February 27, 2005. The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.