1952 in art

Events

• August 29 - Composer John Cage's 4′33″, during which the performer does not play, premieres in Woodstock, New York.
• 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.
• 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 - A Man who Suddenly Fell Over
• Francis Bacon
  • Figure in a landscape
  • Study for Crouching Nude
• Salvador Dalí - Galatea of the Spheres
• Dwight D. Eisenhower - Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
• M. C. Escher
  • Gravitation
  • Puddle
• Helen Frankenthaler - Mountains and Sea
• Elisabeth Frink - Bird
• Willem de Kooning - Woman I
• Henri Laurens - L'Amphion (sculpture, University City of Caracas)
• 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 - The Death of Nelson
• Jackson Pollock - Blue Poles
• Kay Sage - On the Contrary
• David Smith - Agricola I (sculpture)
• Dorothea Tanning - The Friend's Room

Exhibitions

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

Births

• August 13 - Herb Ritts, American photographer (d. 2002)
• date unknown - Graham Forsythe, Northern Irish/Canadian painter

Deaths

• March 3 - Howard Chandler Christy, painter and illustrator (b. 1873)
• May 5 - Alberto Savinio, writer and painter (b. 1891)
• August 16 - Lydia Field Emmet, painter (b. 1866)
• date unknown:
  • Arthur Beecher Carles, Modernist painter (b. 1882)
  • William Lee Hankey, painter and illustrator (b. 1869)

See also

• 1952 in fine arts of the Soviet Union