1953 in art

Events

• November – New building for Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, the first major commission for Louis Kahn, opens.
• Anthony Blunt's Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700 is published.
• Yves Klein becomes a master at judo, receiving the rank of yodan from the Kodokan in Japan.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Ivor Hele – ''Sir Henry Simpson Newland, CBE, DSO, MS, FRCS''

Works

• Hans Arp – Cloud Shepherd
• Francis Bacon
• * Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
• * Two Figures (1953)
• John Brack
• * '
• * The New House
• Alberto Burri - Rosso Gobbo
• Alexander Calder – Acoustic Clouds
• José Manuel Capuletti - Dama en la Playa
• Edwin Dickinson – Ruin at Daphne
• Dong Xiwen – The Founding Ceremony of the Nation
• Jacob Epstein – Social Consciousness
• M. C. Escher – Relativity
• Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph
• Edward Hopper – Office in a Small City
• Willem de Kooning – Woman III
• Norman Lewis - Migrating Birds
• L. S. Lowry
• * Football Ground
• * Industrial Landscape
• * '
• René Magritte – Golconda
• Marino Marini – Horse and Rider
• Henri Matisse – The Snail
• Roberto Matta – Cercle du Blé
• Milton Menasco – 'La Troienne' and Her Foals: Eighteen Vignettes and One Painting Together in One Frame for John Whitney
• Henry Moore – Draped Reclining Figure
• Alexander Phimister Proctor – John McLoughlin
• Jackson Pollock – Portrait and a Dream
• Larry Rivers – Washington Crossing the Delaware
• Mark Rothko – No. 61 (Rust and Blue)
• Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov – In the Sun
• Charles Sheeler – ''Ore Into Iron''

Exhibitions

• October – Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings are exhibited at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in New York City.

Births

• January 7 – Robert Longo, American painter and sculptor
• January 9 – Javad Alizadeh, Iranian cartoonist and painter
• February 25 – Martin Kippenberger, German artist
• April 24 – Eric Bogosian, American performance artist
• May 18 – Helen Chadwick, English conceptual artist
• September 12 – Stephen Sprouse, American fashion designer and artist
• Full date unknown
• * Steven Campbell, Scottish figurative painter
• * Michael Kenna, English landscape photographer
• * Kevin O'Neill, English comic book illustrator
• * Marjetica Potrč, Slovenian artist and architect

Deaths

• February 1 – Archibald Nicoll, New Zealand painter
• February 12 – Uroš Predić, Serbian Realist painter
• March 23 – Raoul Dufy, French Fauvist painter
• March 26 – Đorđe Jovanović, Serbian sculptor
• April 15 – Charles R. Knight, American animal painter
• April 29
• * Moïse Kisling, Polish-born painter
• * Alice Prin, French artist, model and entertainer
• June 23 – Albert Gleizes, French painter
• September 13 – Mary Brewster Hazelton, American portrait painter
• September 26 – Xu Beihong, Chinese painter
• October 2 – John Marin, American modernist painter
• October 6 – Vera Mukhina, Latvian-born Soviet sculptor
• October 11 – James Earle Fraser, American sculptor
• October 21 – Sir Muirhead Bone, British etcher
• November 30 – Francis Picabia, French painter and poet date unknown – J. Laurie Wallace, Irish American painter