1945 in art

Events from the year 1945 in art.

Events

April 12 – President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt collapses while having a portrait painted by Elizabeth Shoumatoff at Warm Springs, Georgia, dying shortly afterwards.
April 15 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp liberated. Among the British war artists who record it soon afterwards are Sgt. Eric Taylor, Leslie Cole, Doris Zinkeisen, Mervyn Peake, Mary Kessell and Carl Giles, together with Edgar Ainsworth and photographer Bert Hardy of Picture Post. William Congdon, serving as an ambulance driver, is one of the first Americans to enter the camp.
April 28 – Professor Anthony Blunt is appointed to succeed Sir Kenneth Clark as Surveyor of the King's Pictures in the United Kingdom.
April
* German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring's looted art cache is transferred from his country estate, Carinhall, to Berchtesgaden where it will be found by U.S. forces.
* U.S. forces reach the Kaiserode mine at Merkers in Germany, finding 400 paintings from Berlin museums, other art treasures and gold.
May
* Allied forces reach the Nazi stolen art repository in the salt mines at Altaussee in Austria, finding more than 6,500 paintings, including Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges and Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece.
* Retreating SS forces destroy the Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings in store at Schloss Immendorf.
* Ben Nicholson paints still lifes incorporating British Union Flags to mark V-E Day.
July–December – Han van Meegeren paints his last forgery of a Dutch Golden Age painting, Jesus among the Doctors, before witnesses in Amsterdam to refute charges of having sold genuine Dutch cultural property to Nazis.
October 25 – Jackson Pollock marries Lee Krasner.
Constantine Andreou moves to France, having received a scholarship from the French government.
New York businessman Henry Pearlman acquires Chaïm Soutine's View of Céret, the foundation of his collection of modern art.

Awards

Archibald Prize: William Dargie – ''Lt-General The Hon Edmund Herring, KBC, DSO, MC, ED''

Exhibitions

January – Mark Rothko exhibition in the Daylight Gallery of Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery in Manhattan.
March 19 – Jackson Pollock's second solo exhibition opens in the Daylight Gallery of Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery in Manhattan.

Works

David Alfaro Siqueiros – El Coronelazo
C. C. Beall – Now... All Together
Hyman Bloom – Christmas Tree
Marc Chagall – Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio
Colin Colahan – Ballet of Wind and Rain
Leslie Cole
* '
* Death pits at Bergen-Belsen
Salvador Dalí
* The Apotheosis of Homer
* Basket of Bread
* Portrait of a Passionate Woman
Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza – Portrait of General Franco
Russell Drysdale – The Drover's Wife
Alfred Eisenstaedt – V-J Day in Times Square
Max Ernst – The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Nora Heysen – '
Yevgeny Khaldei – Raising a Flag over the Reichstag
Georg Mayer-Marton – Women with Boulders
Pablo Picasso – The Charnel House
Jackson Pollock – Troubled Queen
Joe Rosenthal – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Ben Shahn
* Death on the Beach
* Liberation
Elizabeth Shoumatoff – Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Janet Sobel – Illusion of Solidity
Philip Zec – Here you are. Don't lose it again!
Doris Zinkeisen – ''Human Laundry, Belsen''

Births

January 20 – Susan Rothenberg, American painter
January 25 – Barbara Kruger, American photographer, graphic artist and sculptor
January 31 – Joseph Kosuth, American conceptual artist
March 4 – Rose Finn-Kelcey, English performance and installation artist
March 8 – Anselm Kiefer, German sculptor
June 2 – Richard Long, English land artist
June 14 – Jörg Immendorff, German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor
June 30 – Sean Scully, Irish-born painter
July 16 – Victor Sloan, Irish visual artist
July 28 – Jim Davis, American cartoonist, creator of "Garfield"
August 4 – Paul McCarthy, American sculptor and installation and video artist
August 6 – Duggie Fields, English painter
August 9 – Posy Simmonds, English cartoonist
August 18 – Brummbaer, German digital artist
August 19 – Peter Reginato, American sculptor
September 27 – Jack Goldstein, Canadian-born American performance and conceptual artist turned painter
October 13 – Heinz Plank, German painter, draughtsman and graphic artist
October 23 – Maggi Hambling, English painter and sculptor
November 14 – David Nash, English sculptor and academic
December 18 – Nasser Khalili, Iranian-British collector, art scholar, investor and philanthropistdate unknown
* Suzanne Lacy, American installation, video and performance artist
* Daisy Youngblood, American ceramic artist and sculptor
* Astrid Preston, American artist, writer and painter

Deaths

January 3 - René Gimpel, French art dealer
January 7 – Alexander Stirling Calder, American sculptor
February 7 – H. J. Ward, American illustrator
February 21 – Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, Danish sculptor
March 5 – Albert Richards, English war artist ; killed on active service in the Netherlands
March 6 – Milena Pavlović-Barili, Serbian painter and poet ; died in riding accident in the United States
March 10 – Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, English painter
March 31 – Hando Ruus, Estonian painter ; presumed executed as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union
April – Josef Čapek, Czech painter and writer ; died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
April 22 – Käthe Kollwitz, German painter, lithographer and sculptor
May 5 – René Lalique, French glass designer
June 15 – Nikola Avramov, Bulgarian painter
September 16 – David Young Cameron, Scottish painter and etcher
October 24 – Franklin Carmichael, Canadian painter
October 31 – Ignacio Zuloaga, Basque painter
November 23 – Ljubomir Ivanović, Serbian painter
November – Thomas Hennell, English painter ; presumed killed on active service in Indonesia
December 20 – Ong Schan Tchow, Chinese artist ; died in Malaysiadate unknown
* John Duncan, Scottish symbolist painter
* Franz Sedlacek, Austrian painter ; presumed killed on active service in Poland