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Events from the year 1981 in art.

Events

  • 10 September – Picasso's painting Guernica is returned from New York to Madrid.
  • unknown date – Blek le Rat begins his stencil graffiti art in Paris.

Awards

  • Archibald Prize: Eric Smith – Rudy Komon

Exhibitions

  • 9 June – Black Art an'done opens at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in the UK.

Works

  • Tony Cragg – Britain as Seen from the North
  • John Doubleday – Statue of Charlie Chaplin (Leicester Square, London)
  • Don Eckland – Emergence (bronze, Eugene, Oregon)
  • Bryan Hunt – Arch Falls (bronze, Houston, Texas)
  • Nabil Kanso – Dreamvision series of paintings completed
  • Ellsworth Kelly – Curve XXIV (sculpture, Seattle)
  • Carlo Maria Mariani – The Constellation of Leo
  • Ana Mendieta Maroya (Esculturas Rupestres) (executed in caves in Cuba)
  • Odd Nerdrum – Twilight
  • Helmut Newton – Sie kommen! ("They're coming!", photographic diptych; published in French Vogue, November)
  • Richard Serra – Tilted Arc, Federal Plaza, New York City (dismantled 1989)
  • Andy Warhol – Myths series
  • Aubrey Williams – Shostakovich series of paintings completed

Births

  • 15 April – Seth Wulsin, American artist
  • 19 April – Saskia de Brauw, Dutch model and artist
  • 4 November – Paul Tucker, Canadian visual artist and graphic novel and webcomic illustrator
  • 20 November – Scott Hutchison, Scottish singer, songwriter, guitarist, and visual artist (d. 2018)

Deaths

  • 19 January – Francesca Woodman, 22, American photographer
  • 4 April – Isaac Frenkel Frenel, Israeli French painter and sculptor (b. 1899)
  • 8 May – Grethe Jürgens, German painter (b. 1899)
  • 25 May – Armando de Armas Romero, Cuban painter (b. 1914)
  • 28 May – Jean Paul Slusser, painter, designer, art critic, professor, and director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (b. 1886)
  • 16 June – Hans Coper, German-born English studio potter (b. 1920)
  • 19 June – Lotte Reiniger, German silhouette animator and film director (b.1899)
  • 29 June – Russell Drysdale, Australian artist (b. 1912)
  • 8 July – Isaac Soyer, Russian-born American painter, (b. 1902)
  • 16 July – John E. Berninger, American landscape painter (b. 1896)
  • 7 September – Christy Brown, Irish author, painter and poet (b. 1932)
  • 12 October – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (b. 1921)
  • 13 October – Antonio Berni, Argentine painter (b. 1905)
  • 20 October – Annot, German painter (b. 1894).
  • 23 October – Reg Butler, English sculptor (b. 1913)
  • 17 November – Nano Reid, Irish painter (b. 1905)
  • 22 November – Corrado Parducci, Italian-American architectural sculptor (b. 1900)
  • 5 December - Max Spivak - 74, American muralist (b. 1901)
  • 28 December – Bram van Velde, Dutch painter (b. 1895)

Full date unknown

  • Hubert Davis, American artist (b.1902).
  • Art Frahm, American pin-up and advertising artist (b.1907).
  • Pinchus Kremegne, Belarusian sculptor, painter and lithographer (b.1890).

See also

  • 1981 in fine arts of the Soviet Union

References