1983 in art

Events

• Galería OMR commercial contemporary art gallery founded in Mexico City.
• High Museum of Art, designed by Richard Meier, opened in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Australian painter Sidney Nolan settles in Britain at Rodd Court in Herefordshire on the Welsh border near Presteigne.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Nigel Thomson – ''Chandler Coventry''

Works

• Richard Beyer's Charles Frederic Swigert Jr. Memorial Fountain installed in Oregon Zoo, Portland.
• Completion of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude environmental artwork, Surrounded Islands, involving eleven islands in Biscayne Bay off Miami being surrounded by 6,500,000 square feet of pink fabric.
• Lucian Freud - Large Interior W11
• Completion of Richard Hamilton's diptych .
• Cast of John Seward Johnson II's painted bronze Allow Me installed in Portland, Oregon.
• Marta Minujin - The Parthenon of Books.
• Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle's kinetic artwork, the Stravinsky Fountain near the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Births

• Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Qatari chairperson of the Qatar Museums Authority
• Jérémie Iordanoff, French abstract artist
• Milo Moiré, Swiss performance artist

Deaths

January to June

• 24 February – Roy Krenkel, American illustrator.
• 3 March – Hergé, Belgian comics writer and artist.
• 21 May – Kenneth Clark, English author, museum director, broadcaster and art historians.
• 11 May – Ernst Thoms, German painter.
• 8 June – Rachel Baes, Belgian painter .
• 28 June – Dorothy Annan, English painter, potter, and muralist

July to December

• 14 July – Philip Zec, British editorial cartoonist.
• 12 August – Franz Radziwill, German painter.
• 18 August – Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born British art historian.
• 28 October – Otto Messmer, American animator.
• 5 November – Jean-Marc Reiser, French comics creator.
• 17 November – John Russell Harper, Canadian art historian.
• 2 December – Aart van den IJssel, Dutch sculptor.
• 20 December – Bill Brandt, German-born British photographer and photojournalist.
• 23 December – Colin Middleton, Irish artist.
• 25 December – Joan Miró, Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist.
• 26 December – Hans Liska, Austrian-born German artist.

Full date unknown

• Michael Cardew, English studio potter.
• Bernard Lamotte, French illustrator, painter and muralist.
• Edward Wesson, English watercolour artist.