1940 in art

Events

• February – The series of 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' propaganda posters by 'Fougasse' is published by the Ministry of Information (United Kingdom).
• March – The Tartu Art Museum is officially established in Tartu, Estonia; its first exhibition is opened in November 1940.
• July – The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce of the Nazi Party begins its task of appropriating cultural property from occupied territories, initially in France.
• October – Grandma Moses' second solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted", opens at Otto Kallir's Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York City.
• November 3 – The War Artists' Advisory Committee of the U.K. Ministry of Information opens its first exhibition of War Pictures by British Artists to the public at the otherwise-evacuated National Gallery in London.
• November 13 – Release of Walt Disney's animated movie Fantasia in the United States.
• December 8 – Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera remarry in San Francisco
• Cecil Beaton is among the photographers commissioned by the U.K. Ministry of Information to undertake war photography.
• Xawery Dunikowski is deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he survives until 1945.
• Jacques Lipchitz flees France for the United States.
• Henry Moore is commissioned as a war artist and produces drawings of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from The Blitz.
• Anthony Blunt's Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600 is published. This year he is recruited to work for MI5 while simultaneously spying for the NKVD.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Max Meldrum – ''Dr J Forbes McKenzie''

Works

Paintings

• Vanessa Bell – Leonard Woolf
• Pierre Bonnard – Oranges et Kakis
• Clive Branson – Noreen and Rosa
• Howard Chandler Christy – Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States
• Charles Cundall – The Withdrawal from Dunkirk, June 1940
• Salvador Dalí
• * The Face of War
• * Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire
• 'Fougasse' – Careless Talk Costs Lives
• Jared French – Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler
• Jesús Guerrero Galván – Head of a Woman
• Edward Hopper
• * Gas
• * Office at Night
• Frida Kahlo
• * '
• * '
• * '
• * '
• * Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
• * The Wounded Table
• Raymond McGrath – Training Aircraft Under Construction
• Conroy Maddox – The Strange Country
• Henri Matisse
• * La Blouse Roumaine
• * Le Rêve de 1940
• Roberto Matta – Dark Light
• John Piper
• * Interior of Coventry Cathedral, November 15th, 1940
• * '
• * '
• Candido Portinari – Seascape
• Eric Ravilious – Watercolours
• * '
• * '
• * Ship's Screw on a Railway Truck
• * '
• Charles Sheeler
• * Bucks County Barn
• * Fugue
• * Interior
• Situ Qiao – Put Down Your Whip
• Graham Sutherland
• * '
• * Devastation, 1940: A House on the Welsh Border
• Hugh J. Ward – Portrait of Superman
• Carel Willink – Wilma with Cat
• Grant Wood – ''Sentimental Ballad''

Photographs

• Herbert Mason – St Paul's Survives
• Nickolas Muray – ''Soldiers of the Sky''

Sculptures

• Eric Aumonier – The Archer
• Carl Milles – The Wedding of the Waters
• Isamu Noguchi – News
• Attilio Piccirilli – Guglielmo Marconi
• José Ângelo Cottinelli Telmo and Leopoldo de Almeida – ''Padrão dos Descobrimentos''

Exhibitions

Births

• January – Anthony d'Offay, British art dealer
• January 2 – Peter Young, American painter
• January 6 – John Byrne, Scottish painter and writer
• January 24
• * Vito Acconci, American conceptual artist, installation artist, performance artist and filmmaker
• * Mel Bochner, American conceptual artist
• February 22 – Billy Name, born William Linich Jr., American photographer, collaborator with Andy Warhol
• March 7 – Hannah Wilke, American painter, sculptor and photographer
• March 9 - Giancarlo Impiglia, Italian born Italian-American painter
• March 20 – Mary Ellen Mark, American photographer
• April 11 – Marcia Tucker, American museum curator
• April 16 – Joan Snyder, American painter
• April 30 – Burt Young, born Gerald DeLouise, American actor, painter, and author
• May 1 – Elsa Peretti, Italian jewelry designer
• May 11 – Juan Downey, Chilean-American video artist
• May 25 – Nobuyoshi Araki, Japanese photographer
• June 17 – Alton Kelley, American poster and album artist
• July 5 – Chuck Close, American "photorealistic" painter
• July 27 – Pina Bausch, German neo-expressionist choreographer and dancer
• August 23 – Galen Rowell, American wilderness photographer
• September 6 – Elizabeth Murray, American painter, printmaker and draughtsman
• September 10 – David Mann, American painter
• September 26 – Arno Rink, German painter and professor
• September 27 – Rudolph Moshammer, German fashion designer
• October 22 – Ashley Jackson, Malaysian-born Yorkshire landscape watercolouristdate unknown
• * Germano Celant, Italian art critic, curator and historian
• * Stevan Knežević, Serbian painter, sculptor and professor of art
• * Anthony McCall, British-born American avant-garde installation artist, projected film
• * Dušan Otašević, Serbian painter and sculptor
• * Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Native American painter and printmaker ** Mel Bochner, American conceptual artist

Deaths

• January 18 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian American landscape painter
• February 11 – Ellen Day Hale, American painter and printmaker
• February 27 – Nicolae Tonitza, Romanian painter and etcher
• March 16 – Iso Rae, Australian Impressionist painter
• April 15 – Alexandru Plămădeală, Moldovan sculptor
• May 13 - Henry Charles Fehr, British sculptor
• June 21 – Édouard Vuillard, French painter
• June 29 – Paul Klee, Swiss painter expressionism, cubism, and surrealism
• July 4 – Józef Pankiewicz, Polish painter, graphic artist and teacher
• July 28 – Gerda Wegener, Danish artist
• July 31 – Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, German avant-garde painter, by involuntary euthanasia
• August 22 – Paul Gösch, German artist and architect
• September 5 – Frances Darlington, English relief sculpture
• September 15 – Dick Ket, Dutch painter
• September 27 – Walter Benjamin, German philosopher, "comparatist" and art critic
• October 15 – Karl Uchermann, Norwegian canine painter
• November 16 – Colin Gill, English war artist, muralist and portrait painter.
• November 17 – Eric Gill, English sculptor and engraver date unknown – Francesco Stella, Italian painter and set designer