1919 in art

Events

• April 25 – The Bauhaus architectural and design movement is founded in Weimar, Germany, by Walter Gropius.
• December – The National War Paintings and Other Records exhibition staged at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
• Seven and Five Society established in London.
• Piet Mondrian, in Paris, begins painting his grid-based compositions (Neo-Plasticism).
• Musée Rodin opens in Paris at the Hôtel Biron and Villa des Brillants, Meudon.
• Chaim Soutine first visits Céret in the Pyrenees where he begins a series of landscapes.
• Les Champs Magnétiques, the first book produced using the techniques of surrealist automatism, is written by André Breton and Philippe Soupault.
• Publication in England of W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence, loosely based on the life of Paul Gauguin.

Works

John Singer Sargent - Gassed

• Norman G. Arnold – The Last Fight of Captain Ball, VC, DSO and 2 Bars, MC, 7th May 1917
• Max Beckmann – The Night
• David Bomberg – Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company, Hill 60, St Eloi
• John Arnesby Brown – The Line of the Plough
• Sydney Carline
  • Flying Above Kirkuk, Kurdistan
  • Flying Over the Desert at Sunset, Mesopotamia
  • The Trail of War
• Harry Clarke – illustrations to Tales of Mystery & Imagination
• Evelyn De Morgan – The Gilded Cage
• Marcel Duchamp – L.H.O.O.Q.
• Aleksandra Ekster – City at Night
• Jacob Epstein – Sergeanat D. F. Hunter VC, 1/5 Highland Light Infantry (bronze bust)
• Max Ernst
  • Aquis Submersus
  • Trophy, Hypertrophied (line-block printing and drawing)

Marcel Duchamp – L.H.O.O.Q.

• Luke Fildes – Paul Fildes
• Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven – Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (sculpture of found objects)
• Colin Gill
  • Evening, After a Push
  • Heavy Artillery
• Eileen Gray – "Dragons" armchair
• Elioth Gruner – Spring Frost
• Hannah Höch – Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands ("Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany"; collage)
• Augustus John – Marchesa Casati
• Henry Lamb – Irish troops in the Judean hills surprised by a Turkish bombardment
• Fernand Léger
  • The City
  • The Railway Crossing
• Ivor Lewis – Timothy Eaton statues
• Wyndham Lewis – A Battery Shelled
• David Low – Strange, I seem to hear a child weeping (political cartoon)
• Henri Matisse – Les plumes blanches ("White Plumes")
• Claude Monet – paintings in Water Lilies series
  • Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas
  • Water Lilies
• Paul Nash – The Menin Road
• C. R. W. Nevinson – The Harvest of Battle
• Sir William Orpen
  • A Peace Conference at the Quai d'Orsay
  • The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919
• Pablo Picasso – Still Life with Pitcher and Apples
• John Singer Sargent – Gassed
• Zinaida Serebriakova – House of Cards
• Charles Sims – The Old German Front Line, Arras, 1916
• Stanley Spencer – Travoys with Wounded Soldiers Arriving at a Dressing Station at Smol, Macedonia, September 1916
• Edward Wadsworth – Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool

Births

January to June

• January 5 – Frederick Hammersley, American painter (d. 2009)
• January 19 – Joan Brossa, Catalan poet, playwright, graphic designer and plastic artist (d. 1998)
• January 22 – John Russell, British American art critic (d. 2008)
• January 24 – William Copley, American artist (d. 1996)
• March 23 – Salvatore Scarpitta, American sculptor (d. 2007)
• April 9 – Gordon Lambert, Irish art collector (d. 2005)
• April 24 – César Manrique, Spanish artist and architect (d. 1992)
• May 3 – John Cullen Murphy, American comics artist (d. 2004)
• May 9 – Anne Yeats, Irish painter and stage designer (d. 2001)
• June 21 – Jean Joyet, French artist (d. 1994)

July to December

• July 6 – Oswaldo Guayasamín, Ecuadorian painter and sculptor (d. 1999)
• July 17 – Jean Leymarie, French art historian (d. 2006)
• July 18 – Daniel du Janerand, French painter (d. 1990)
• July 31 – Maurice Boitel, French painter (d. 2007)
• September 8 – Maria Lassnig, Austrian painter (d. 2014)
• September 29 – Vladimír Vašíček, Czech painter (d. 2003)
• November 3 – Jesús Blasco, Spanish comic books author and artist (d. 1995)
• November 11 – Jef Friboulet, French painter and sculptor (d. 2003)
• December 12 – Cliff Holden, English painter, designer and silk-screen printer
• December 24 – Pierre Soulages, French "painter of black"

Full date unknown

• Avni Arbaş, Turkish artist (d. 2003)

Deaths

• January 22 – Carl Larsson, Swedish painter (b. 1853)
• February 18 – Antonin Carlès, sculptor (b. 1851)
• February 27 – Robert Harris, painter (b. 1848)
• March 24 – Franz Metzner, sculptor (b. 1870)
• March 25 – Wilhelm Lehmbruck, German sculptor (b. 1881) (suicide)
• May 13 – Helen Hyde. etcher and engraver (b. 1868)
• August 9 – Ralph Albert Blakelock, American painter (b. 1847)
• November 18 – John Dibblee Crace, interior decorator (b. 1838)
• December 2 – Henry Clay Frick, founder of the Frick Collection (b. 1849)
• December 3 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter (b. 1841)
• December 18 – James Coutts Michie, painter b. 1859)
• date unknown
  • Edmund Elisha Case, American painter (b 1844)