1952 in art

Events

• August 29 – Composer John Cage's 4′33″, during which the performer does not play, premieres in Maverick Concert Hall, Woodstock, New York.
• Eight younger British artists are represented in the "New Aspects of British Sculpture" exhibition at the Venice Biennale which Herbert Read describes as the "Geometry of Fear". Britain also displays paintings by Graham Sutherland and Edward Wadsworth.
• Louis le Brocquy's 1951 painting A Family sparks controversy in Ireland when a group of art patrons offer to present it to the Dublin Municipal Gallery and it is rejected by the Art Advisory Committee on the grounds of incompetence.
• Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographic collection Images à la sauvette is published by Tériade in Paris.
• Publication of Un Art Autre, by Michel Tapié.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Mr Essington Lewis, CH
• Prix Puvis de Chavannes – Tristan Klingsor

Works

• Michael Andrews – '
• Francis Bacon
• * Figure in a landscape
• * Study for Crouching Nude
• Salvador Dalí – Galatea of the Spheres
• Nicolas de Stael - Le Parc des Princes
• Dwight D. Eisenhower – '
• M. C. Escher
• * Gravitation
• * Puddle
• Helen Frankenthaler – Mountains and Sea
• Lucian Freud – Girl In Bed
• Elisabeth Frink – Bird
• Willem de Kooning – Woman I
• Henri Laurens – L'Amphion
• René Magritte – The Listening Room
• Henri Matisse – cutouts
• * series of Blue Nudes, e.g., ', Blue Nude II
• * Black Leaf on Green Background
• * La Négresse
• * The Sorrows of the King
• John Minton – '
• Henry Moore – King and Queen
• Jackson Pollock – Blue Poles
• Germaine Richier - The Devil with Claws
• Kay Sage – On the Contrary
• David Smith – Agricola I
• Tom Stefopoulos - Lovejoy Columns in Portland, Oregon, pre-exiasiting structures painted by
• Dorothea Tanning – ''The Friend's Room''

Exhibitions

• September 25 – November 9 – Jacob Epstein retrospective, Tate Gallery, London
• Exhibition of forgeries, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Births

• March 18 – Sally Robinson, English-born Australian painter
• March 22 – Bernard Pras, French plastics technician
• May 23 – Martin Parr, English documentary colour photographer
• August 13 – Herb Ritts, American photographer
• October 20 – Derek Ridgers, English portrait and street culture photographer
• November 15 – Blek le Rat, French stencil graffiti artist
• November 22 – Corno, Canadian post-pop painter date unknown
• * Graham Forsythe, Northern Irish/Canadian painter
• * Duncan Hannah, American painter
• * Mona Hatoum, Lebanese-born Palestinian multimedia artist
• * James Little, American painter
• * Daniel Meadows, English photographer
• * Ian Rank-Broadley, English sculptor

Deaths

• March 3 – Howard Chandler Christy, American painter and illustrator
• April 9 – Caroline Risque, American sculptor and painter
• May 5 – Alberto Savinio, Italian writer and painter
• May 6 – Oswald Birley
• June 9 – Alice Austen, American photographer
• August 16 – Lydia Field Emmet, American painter
• October 15 – Katharine Adams, English bookbinder
• December 15 - Goscombe John, Welsh sculptor date unknown:
• * Arthur Beecher Carles, American Modernist painter
• * William Lee Hankey, English painter and illustrator
• * Nicolas Sursock, Lebanese art collector