1920 in art

Events

• February 1 – The National Art Gallery of Georgia opens in Tbilisi.
• March 17 – The Edith Cavell Memorial, by George Frampton, is unveiled in London.
• March 27 – Society of Wood Engravers founded in the United Kingdom.
• June 30–August 25 – The first Dadaist Fair is held in Berlin. The Cologne group is formed by Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Alfred Grünwald.
• August 5 – Publication of the 'Realistic Manifesto', a Constructivist text, by Naum Gabo with his brother Anton Pevsner in Moscow.
• November 7 – The "mass action" The Storming of the Winter Palace, directed by Nikolai Evreinov, is staged outside the Winter Palace in Petrograd.
• unknown dates
• * Katherine Dreier, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp form Société Anonyme.
• * Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada set up the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall.
• * The Heckscher Museum of Art is established in Huntington, New York.
• * The Latvian Museum of Foreign Art is established in Riga.
• * Droit de suite is introduced in France.

Works

• Hans Baluschek – City of Workers
• Cecilia Beaux – portrait of Georges Clemenceau
• Thomas Hart Benton – People of Chilmark
• Pierre Bonnard – Normand Landscape
• Alexander Stirling Calder – Swann Memorial Fountain
• Sydney Carline – The Destruction of the Turkish Transport in the Gorge of the Wadi Fara, Palestine
• Giorgio de Chirico – Self-portrait
• Lovis Corinth – Flowers and Wilhelmine
• Charles Demuth – Machinery
• Otto Dix
• * The Skat Players
• * The Match Seller
• * Prague Street
• Max Ernst
• * The Hat Makes the Man
• * Murdering Airplane
• James Earle Fraser – Frederick Keep Monument
• Daniel Chester French
• * Abraham Lincoln
• * Dupont Circle Fountain
• * Wisconsin
• Albert Gleizes – Woman with Black Glove
• J. W. Godward – A Red, Red Rose
• George Grosz
• * Daum marries her pedantic automaton George in May 1920, John Heartfield is very glad of it
• * Republican Automatons
• Richard Jack – '
• Goscombe John – Equestrian statue of the Viscount Wolseley
• Einar Jónsson – Thorfinn Karlsefni
• Eric Kennington – The Victims
• Winifred Knights – The Deluge
• Boris Kustodiev
• * Blue House
• * The Bolshevik
• * Portrait of Isaak Brodsky
• * Trinity Day
• George Washington Lambert – A Sergeant of the Light Horse
• Fernand Léger – The Tugboat
• Edwin Lutyens
• * The Cenotaph, Whitehall, London
• * with Alfred Munnings – Equestrian statue of Edward Horner, St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset, England
• Paul Klee
• * Angelus Novus
• * Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees)
• Stanton Macdonald-Wright – Airplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange
• Henri Matisse – Interior at Nice
• Joan Miró
• * Horse, Pipe and Red Flower
• * The Spanish Playing Cards '
• C. R. W. Nevinson – The Soul of the Soulless City
• William Nicholson
• * Gertrude Jekyll
• *
• Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin – 1918 in Petrograd
• Victor Rousseau – Bronze figure group for Anglo-Belgian Memorial, London
• Charles Marie Louis Joseph Sarrabezolles – L'Âme de la France
• Georg Scholz – Industrial Farmers
• Charles Sheeler – Church Street El
• Mario Sironi – Truck
• Stanley Spencer
• * The Last Supper
• * Christ Carrying the Cross
• Lorado Taft – Fountain of Time
• Aston Webb and Alfred Drury – London Troops War Memorial

Publications

• Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler – Der Weg zum Kubismus.

Births

January to June

• January 12 – Bill Reid, Canadian artist.
• January 17 – Georges Pichard, French comics artist.
• January 30 – Patrick Heron, English painter, writer and designer.
• February 22 – Rocco Borella, Italian painter.
• March 3 – Ronald Searle, English cartoonist.
• March 14 – Hank Ketcham, American cartoonist.
• March 19 – Kjell Aukrust, Norwegian poet and artist
• March 27 – Robin Jacques, English illustrator.
• April 8 – Hans Coper, German-born studio potter.
• April 24 – Paul Wonner, American painter.
• April 26 – Maynard Reece, American painter
• May – Hans Josephsohn, German-born sculptor.
• May 8
• * Saul Bass, American graphic designer and filmmaker.
• * Tom of Finland, Finnish fetish artist.
• May 10 - Erna Viitol, Estonian sculptor.
• June 4 – Alejandro Obregón, Colombian painter, muralist, sculptor and engraver.
• June 24
• * John Coplans, British-born painter and photographer
• * Jimmy Ernst, German-born American painter.
• June 29 – Ray Harryhausen, American-born stop-motion animator, sculptor.

July to December

• July 20 – Arthur Boyd, Australian painter and sculptor.
• July 21 – Constant Nieuwenhuys, Dutch painter, one of the innovators of Unitary Urbanism.
• August 1 – Ken Bald, American comic book artist and illustrator
• August 5 – George Tooker, American figurative painter.
• August 9 – Gerda Schmidt-Panknin, German painter
• August 15 – Judy Cassab, born Judit Kaszab, Austrian-born Australian portrait painter.
• August 22 – Gene Davis, American painter.
• August 26
• * Mauri Favén, Finnish painter.
• * Brant Parker, American cartoonist.
• August 30 – Leonid Shvartsman, Soviet and Russian animator and artist.
• October 13 – Elaine Hamilton, American painter.
• October 31 – Helmut Newton, German-born photographer.
• November 23 – Wayne Thiebaud, American painter
• November 30 – Walter Chandoha, American cat photographer.
• December 14 – Claire Fejes, American artist.
• December 18 – Enrique Grau, Colombian painter and sculptor.
• December 21 – Bob Bindig, American illustrator

Full date unknown

• Adrian Heath, Burmese-born English painter.
• Raymond Moore, English landscape photographer.
• Daniel O'Neill, Irish painter.

Deaths

• January 24 – Amedeo Modigliani, Italian-born painter and sculptor
• January 26 – Jeanne Hébuterne, French artist, Modigliani's mistress and model
• March 3 – Theodor Philipsen, Danish painter
• March 13 – Mary Devens, American pictorial photographer
• March 15 – Edith Holden, English nature artist and art teacher
• March 26 – Samuel Colman, American painter and designer
• April 20 – Briton Rivière, British painter
• April 27 – Jacob Ungerer, German sculptor
• May 7 – Hugh Thomson, British illustrator
• May 12 – Georges Petit, French art dealer
• July 5 – Max Klinger, German painter and sculptor
• July 14 – Albert von Keller, German painter
• July 17 – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, English studio potter
• August 4 – C. G. Finch-Davies, British bird painter
• August 6 – Edward Francis Searles, American interior designer
• August 12 – Walter W. Winans, American sculptor, painter, marksman and horse-breeder
• August 22 – Anders Zorn, Swedish portrait painter
• September 24 – Peter Carl Fabergé, Russian-born jeweller
• November 13 – Luc-Olivier Merson, French painter date unknown – Edith Corbet, Australian-born British landscape painter