1988 in art

Events

• Opening of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, designed by Steven Holl
• Donatello's bronze Judith and Holofernes is replaced on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence by a replica and moved inside the Palazzo Vecchio.
• David Hockney begins a series of paintings at his seaside home in Malibu, California.

Exhibitions

• July – Freeze, Surrey Docks, London
• September 18 until September 24 - White Room: Bill Albertini at White Columns in New York City.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Fred Cress – John Beard
• Turner Prize – Tony Cragg

Works

• Artists of Ramingining, Northern Territory, Australia – Aboriginal Memorial
• Francis Bacon – Second Version of Triptych 1944
• Gordon Bennett – Outsider
• Wayne Chabre
• *Gargoyles
• **Alan Turing
• **Drosophila Fly Head
• *Grasshopper
• Eldon Garnet – Little Glenn
• Rachel Joynt – People's Island
• Chris Killip – In Flagrante
• Judith Weinshall Liberman – Holocaust Wall Hangings
• Richard Lippold – Ex Stasis
• Paul Matisse – Kendall Band
• David K. Nelson, Jr. – Mirth & Girth
• Louise Nevelson – Sky Landscape
• Éamonn O'Doherty – Anna Livia
• Fred Parhad – Ashurbanipal
• Zlatko Pounov and Steven Lowe – Statue of Mahatma Gandhi (San Francisco)
• Paula Rego –
• Gerhard Richter – Betty
• Susan Dorothea White – The First Supper
• Christopher Wool – ''Apocalypse Now''

Births

• 12 September – Alireza Shojaian, Iranian painter

Deaths

January to June

• 19 January – Cesare Brandi, art critic, historian, and specialist in conservation-restoration theory.
• 31 January – Nedeljko Gvozdenović, a world-renowned Serbian painter.
• 3 February – Ronald Bladen, American sculptor.
• 19 March – Isabel Bishop, American painter and graphic artist.
• 28 March – Neil Williams, American painter.
• 31 March – Georges Lévis, French comic artist.
• 2 April – E. Chambré Hardman, Irish-born British photographer.
• 3 April – Milton Caniff, American cartoonist.
• 17 April
• * Toni Frissell, American photographer.
• * Louise Nevelson, Ukrainian-born American artist.
• 26 April – Guy Boyd, Australian potter and figurative sculptor
• 4 May – Stanley Hayter, English-born printmaker.
• 6 May – Constantino Nivola, Italian sculptor
• 16 May – Charles Keeping, English illustrator, children's book author and lithographer.
• 16 June – Andrea Pazienza, Italian comics artist.

July to December

• 12 July – Julian Trevelyan, English printmaker.
• 24 July – Mira Schendel, Swiss-born Brazilian modernist artist and poet.
• 12 August – Jean-Michel Basquiat, American neo-expressionist painter, suicide.
• 21 August – Ray Eames, American artist and architect.
• 26 September – Marianne Appel, American mural painter and puppet designer.
• 29 September – Charles Addams, American cartoonist.
• 28 October – Pietro Annigoni, Italian painter
• 12 November – Primo Conti, Italian Futurist artist.
• 25 November – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, American portrait artist
• 2 December – Kimon Evan Marengo, Egyptian-born British cartoonist.
• 30 December – Isamu Noguchi, Japanese American artist and landscape architect.

Date unknown

• Reginald George Haggar, English ceramic designer.