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Events from the year 1969 in art.

Events

  • February 2 – Ten paintings are defaced in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  • August 8 – Iain Macmillan photographs the cover picture for The Beatles' album Abbey Road in London.
  • October 5 – Monty Python's Flying Circus is broadcast for the first time on BBC Television, with Terry Gilliam's animations.
  • October 18 – Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (c.1609) is stolen from its frame in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Sicily; it has not been recovered as of 2020.
  • November 19 – The Apollo 12 lunar module lands on the Moon with astronaut and artist Alan Bean; American artist Forrest "Frosty" Myers claims to have smuggled the art piece Moon Museum onto a leg of the module which will remain on the surface.
  • c. December – The music and performance art collective COUM Transmissions is formed in England by Genesis P-Orridge.
  • Late – Andy Warhol, John Wilcock, and Gerard Malanga co-found the magazine Interview.
  • Opening of the Oakland Museum of California, designed by Kevin Roche.

Exhibitions

  • January 9 – In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution displays the art of Winslow Homer for 6 weeks.
  • December 19 - The exhibition Alvin Loving: Psintings opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City marking the frst solo exhibition given to a black artist in the institution's history.
  • Most of the paintings from the following year's "Lyrical Abstraction" exhibition are displayed at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, marking a significant return to expressivity in American abstract painting. For two years the exhibition travels throughout the U.S. including to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Awards

  • Archibald Prize: Ray Crooke – George Johnston
  • John Moores Painting Prize - Richard Hamilton and Mary Martin for "Toaster" and "Cross" (respectively)

Works

  • Kenojuak Ashevak – The Owl
  • Michael Ayrton – The Arkville Minotaur
  • Francis Bacon – Three Studies of Lucian Freud
  • Thomas Bass – Australian Seal (bronze, Washington, D.C.)
  • Edward Bawden – Victoria tile motif on London Underground's Victoria line
  • Fernando Botero - Protestant Family
  • Alexander Calder – La Grande Vitesse (sculpture)
  • Christo and Jeanne Claude - "Wrapped Coast" in Little Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • Mai Dantsig – Partisan Ballad
  • Melvin Edwards - Curtain for William and Peter (sculpture)
  • Helen Frankenthaler – Slice of Stone Itself
  • Frank Frazetta – Egyptian Queen
  • Milton Glaser - Speed City
  • Anna Hyatt Huntington - Equestrian statue of Israel Putnam at Putnam Memorial State Park in Redding, Connecticut (dedicated)
  • Jess Collins - If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink
  • Allen Jones – Hatstand, Table and Chair (sculptures)
  • Ronnie Landfield – Diamond Lake
  • André Lufwa - "Batteur de tam-tam"
  • Joan Mitchell - Sans Neige
  • Shalom Tomáš Neuman - Classical Myth (mixed media, painting, and sculpture)
  • Kanda Nissho – Snow Farm
  • Pablo Picasso- The Kiss
  • Enzo Plazzotta – Baigneuse
  • Jean-Paul Riopelle – La Joute (public sculptural installation, Montreal)
  • Will Roberts – Redberth Village, Pembrokeshire
  • Alexander Semionov – Leningrad in the Morning
  • Victor Teterin – Sredne-Podjacheskaya Street in Leningrad
  • Nikolai Timkov – Russian Winter
  • Hans Unger – Oxford Circus and Green Park tile motifs on London Underground's Victoria line

Exhibitions

  • December 30 until March 1, 1970 - Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (Dan Flavin, Larry Bell, Robert Morris, Franz Erhard Walther, and Pulsa).

Births

  • January 5 – Marilyn Manson, American rock musician and painter
  • February 7 – Andrew Micallef, Maltese painter and musician
  • July 11 – Abigail McLellan, British painter (d. 2009)
  • October 5 – Chantal Joffe, English painter
  • November 26 – Kara Walker, African American artist
  • date unknown
  • Boushra Almutawakel, Yemeni photographer
  • Steven Claydon, English sculptor, installation artist and musician
  • Invader, French urban artist
  • Patricia Martín, Mexican curator

Deaths

  • January 20 – Luigi Del Bianco, Italian-born American sculptor (b. 1892)
  • January 29 – Edward Marshall Boehm, American Expressionist sculptor (b. 1913)
  • March 14 – Ben Shahn, Lithuanian-born American painter and photographer (b. 1898)
  • March 17 – Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Spanish painter (b. 1882)
  • May 11 – T. K. Padmini, Keralan feminist painter (b. 1940; d. in childbirth)
  • June 12 – Aleksandr Deyneka, Russian painter and sculptor (b. 1899)
  • July 5 – Walter Gropius, German-born architect (b. 1883)
  • July 9 – Emerik Feješ, Hungarian and Serbian painter (b. 1904)
  • July 25 – Otto Dix, German painter and printmaker (b. 1891)
  • August – Doris Brabham Hatt, English modernist painter (b. 1890)
  • September 15 – Edith Barry, American sculptor, painter, illustrator and designer (b. 1883)
  • November 21 – Norman Lindsay, Australian sculptor and cartoonist (born 1879)

See also

  • 1969 in fine arts of the Soviet Union

References