1980 in art
Events from the year 1980 in art.
Events
- January 1 – Gary Larson's single-panel comic The Far Side debuts in the San Francisco Chronicle.
- February 7 – Pink Floyd's The Wall Tour opens at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
- May 22–September 16 – Pablo Picasso Retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the largest and most complete Picasso exhibition ever held in the United States.
- December 8 – Annie Leibovitz photographs John Lennon with Yoko Ono in New York for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine five hours before his murder.
- Robert Hughes presents a series, The Shock of the New, for BBC Television in the United Kingdom on "art and the century of change".
- Benedikt Taschen opens a comic book store in Cologne which will evolve into the art book publisher Taschen.
Exhibitions
- February 17 until April 6 - "Afro-American Abstraction" (curated by April Kingsley at MoMA PS1 in New York City.
Works
- Basil Blackshaw – Green Landscape
- Arbit Blatas – The Monument of the Holocaust
- Alan Chung Hung – Gate to the Northwest Passage
- David Inshaw – The River Bank (Ophelia)
- Keith Jellum – Mimir
- Nabil Kanso
- * Apocalyptic Rider
- * Time Suspended in Space (South Africa)
- Peter Kennard – Haywain with Cruise Missiles
- Georgia O'Keeffe – Llama in the Desert
- Bryan Organ –
- Howard Post – Moving Cattle
- George Segal – ''''
Awards
- John Moores Painting Prize - Michael Moon for "Box-room"
Deaths
January to June
- January 9 – Joy Adamson, Austria-Kenyan painter and conservationist.
- January 18 – Cecil Beaton, English photographer and stage and costume designer.
- January 20 – William Roberts, painter.
- January 26 – Dolly Rudeman, Dutch graphic designer.
- February 4 – Stojan Aralica, famous Serbian Impressionist painter and academic.
- February 6 – Albert Kotin, Russian-born American Abstract Expressionist artist.
- February 17 – Graham Sutherland, English artist.
- February 22 – Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian artist, poet and playwright.
- March 5 – John Skeaping, English sculptor and equine painter.
- March 18 – Tamara de Lempicka, Polish Art Deco painter.
- April 21
- * Ľudovít Fulla, Slovak painter, graphic artist, illustrator, stage designer and art teacher.
- * Sohrab Sepehri, Persian poet and a painter.
- May 15 – Len Lye, New Zealand-born American kinetic sculptor and filmmaker.
- May 16 – Izis Bidermanas, Lithuanian-born photographer.
- June 7 – Philip Guston, Canadian-born American Abstract Expressionist painter and printmaker.
- June 23 – Clyfford Still, American Abstract Expressionist painter.
July to December
- July 16 – Robert Brackman, Ukrainian-born American painter and art teacher
- August 26 – Tex Avery, American animator, cartoonist, and director.
- September 14 – Maxwell Bates, Canadian architect and expressionist painter.
- November 22 – Norah McGuinness, Irish painter and illustrator.
- December 26 – Tony Smith, American sculptor, visual artist and theorist on art.
- December 30 – Patrick Hennessy, Irish painter.
Undated
- Andrée Bosquet, Belgian painter
- Cicely Hey, English-born artist and model