1981 in art

Events

• 10 September – Picasso's painting Guernica is returned from New York to Madrid.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Eric Smith – Rudy Komon

Works

• Tony Cragg – Britain as Seen from the North
• John Doubleday – Statue of Charlie Chaplin (Leicester Square, London)
• Nabil Kanso – Dreamvision series of paintings completed
• Helmut Newton – Sie kommen! ("They're coming!", photographic diptych; published in French Vogue, November)
• Richard Serra – Tilted Arc, Federal Plaza, New York City (dismantled 1989)
• Andy Warhol – Myths series
• Aubrey Williams – Shostakovich series of paintings completed

Births

• 15 April – Seth Wulsin, American artist.
• 4 November – Paul Tucker, Canadian visual artist and graphic novel and webcomic illustrator.

Deaths

• 19 June – Lotte Reiniger, German silhouette animator and film director (b.1899).
• 29 June – Russell Drysdale, Australian artist (b.1912).
• 8 July – Isaac Soyer Russian-born American painter, (b.1902).
• 7 September – Christy Brown, Irish author, painter and poet (b.1932).
• 12 October – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (b.1921).
• 22 November – Corrado Parducci, Italian-American architectural sculptor (b.1900).

Full date unknown

• Hans Coper, German-born English studio potter (b.1920).
• Art Frahm, American pin-up and advertising artist (b.1907).
• Pinchus Kremegne, Belarusian sculptor, painter and lithographer (b.1890).
• Nano Reid, Irish painter (b.1905).

See also

• 1981 in fine arts of the Soviet Union