1933 in art
Events from the year 1933 in art.
Events
- January 12 – George Grosz emigrates from Nazi Germany to the United States.
- February/March – Käthe Kollwitz is forced by the Nazi Party in Germany to resign from the faculty of the Academy of Arts, Berlin.
- April
- * Closure of the Bauhaus.
- * Freddy Mayor opens a gallery in Cork Street, London, specialising in modernism.
- May – The mural Man at the Crossroads by Diego Rivera at the Rockefeller Center in New York is covered up because it contains a portrait of Lenin. While Rivera has been working on it, he has been joined in the United States by Frida Kahlo who begins her painting My Dress Hangs There.
- June 12 – Paul Nash, in a letter to The Times of London, announces formation of the group Unit One by young British artists to promote modernism in Britain.
- July – New Midland Hotel, Morecambe, on the Lancashire coast of England, designed by Oliver Hill, is opened incorporating sculpture by Eric Gill and murals by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden.
- September/October – "Henri Cartier-Bresson and an Exhibition of Anti-Graphic Photography" staged at Julien Levy's gallery in New York City.
- September – Artists Union formed in the United States as the Emergency Work Bureau Artists Group.
- December 12 – Scholars of the Warburg Institute in Hamburg resolve to relocate from Nazi Germany to London.
- Black Mountain College founded by John Andrew Rice.
- Hans Bellmer produces his first Doll sculpture.
- Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping are divorced; Hepworth is already in a relationship with Ben Nicholson.
- Kenneth Clark appointed Director of the National Gallery, London, at age 30, taking up his post in January 1934.
Works
- Jean Arp – '
- Francis Bacon – Crucifixion
- Renato Bertelli – Profilo continuo del Duce
- Gutzon Borglum – Statue of Harvey W. Scott
- Bill Brandt – Parlourmaid and Under-Parlourmaid Ready to Serve Dinner
- Tarsila do Amaral – Operarios
- Jacob Epstein
- * Man of Aran
- * Primeval Gods / Sun God
- * Portrait busts of Lord Beaverbrook, Prof. Albert Einstein, Robert Flaherty, John Gielgud and Dr Chaim Weizmann
- James Gunn – '
- C. Paul Jennewein
- * Spirit of Justice
- * Western Civilization
- Frida Kahlo
- * My Dress Hangs There
- * '
- André Kertész – Distortions
- René Magritte
- * Elective Affinities
- * The Human Condition
- Piet Mondrian – Composition with Yellow Lines
- Tom Monnington – '
- Hilda Rix Nicholas – The Summer House
- Konstantinos Parthenis – The Apotheosis of Athanasios Diakos
- Pablo Picasso – Minotaur Kneeling over Sleeping Girl
- Gabriel Pippet – mosaic interior decoration, Church of the Sacred Heart and St Catherine of Alexandria, Droitwich Spa, England
- Diego Rivera
- * Detroit Industry Murals
- * Man at the Crossroads
- Percy Shakespeare
- * Mephistopheles
- * A Mulatto
- Amrita Sher-Gil
- * Professional Model
- * Reclining Nude
- * Sleep
- John Skeaping – Horse
- Carel Willink – ''The Zeppelin''
Awards
Births
January to June
- February 8 – Richard Allen, British abstract minimalist Op, Pop, Geometric painter and printmaker
- February 18 – Yoko Ono, Japanese-born sculptor, filmmaker, installation artist and musician
- February 22 – Joseph Raffael, painter
- February 27
- *Ansgar Elde, Swedish ceramic artist
- *Edward Lucie-Smith, British art critic and poet
- March 4 – John W. Mills, English sculptor
- March 10 – Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara, Palestinian artist
- March 17 – Stass Paraskos, Greek Cypriot painter
- April 1 – Dan Flavin, American minimalist artist
- April 9 – René Burri, Swiss photographer
- April 15 – David Hamilton, English photographer
- April 23 – Roger Wittevrongel, Belgian artist
- April 29 – Alison Knowles, American Fluxus performance artist, sound artist, papermaker and printmaker
- June 11 – Harald Szeemann, Swiss curator and art historian
- June 12 – Eddie Adams, American Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer
- June 23
- *Michelangelo Pistoletto, Italian object artist, action painter and art theorist
- * Hermenegildo Sábat, Uruguayan-Argentine caricaturist
July to December
- 8 July – Jeff Nuttall, English poet, publisher, actor, painter and sculptor
- 18 July – Cécile Guillame, first woman to engrave French postal stamps
- 21 July – Laila Pullinen, Finnish sculptor
- 18 August – Michael Baxandall, Welsh art historian
- August 29 – Sorel Etrog, Romanian-born Canadian sculptor, writer and philosopher
- September 18 – Mark di Suvero, Chinese-born Italian American abstract expressionist sculptor
- September 30 – Ilya Kabakov, Soviet-born conceptual artist
- October 9 – Bill Tidy, British cartoonist and illustrator
- October 12 – Guido Molinari, Canadian artist
- October 23 – Juraj Bartusz, Slovak sculptor
- October 28
- * Audrey Amiss, English artist
- * Michael Noakes, English portrait painter
- October 29 – Sydney Ball, Australian abstract painter
- November 8 – Lothar Fischer, German sculptor
- November 18
- * Bruce Conner, American artist in experimental film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage and photography
- * Charlotte Moorman, American Fluxus performance artist
- November 29 – James Rosenquist, American painter and muralist
- November 30 – Sam Gilliam, American painter
- December 14 – Bapu, Indian film director, cartoonist and painter
Full date of birth unknown
- John Stuart Ingle, American realist watercolorist
Deaths
- January 10 – Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Scottish designer
- January 17 – Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist
- February 3 – Anne de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Duchesse d'Uzès, French patron and sculptor
- February 22 – Archibald Knox, Manx designer
- February 28 – Lilla Cabot Perry, American Impressionist painter
- March 9 – Joakim Skovgaard, Danish painter
- March 10 – Émile André, French architect and designer
- April 16 – Harold Peto, English architect and garden designer
- May 6 – François Pompon, French sculptor
- May 25 – James E. Kelly, American sculptor and illustrator
- June 14 – Hans Prinzhorn, German art historian
- August 5 – Charles Harold Davis, American landscape painter
- August 8 – Adolf Loos, Austrian Modernist architect
- September 27 – Zaida Ben-Yusuf, American portrait photographer
- October 2 – Elizabeth Thompson, British painter
- October 24 – Annie Swynnerton, English painter
- October 26 – José Malhoa, Portuguese painter
- October 29 – George Luks, American realist painter
- November 12 – F. Holland Day, American photographer
- November 14 – Thomas Hayton Mawson, English garden designer
- November 15 – Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, French furniture designer
- November 19 – Louise Jopling, English painter
- December 4 – W. G. R. Sprague, British theatre designer date unknown – Susan Isabel Dacre, English painter