1988 in art

Events

Opening of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, designed by Steven Holl

Artists of Ramingining, Northern Territory, Australia – Aboriginal Memorial
Francis Bacon – Second Version of Triptych 1944
Gordon Bennett – Outsider
Wayne Chabre
- Gargoyles (Eugene, Oregon)
  - Alan Turing
  - Drosophila Fly Head
- Grasshopper (sculpture, Salem, Oregon)
Eldon Garnet – Little Glenn (bronze statue)
Rachel Joynt – People's Island (brass installation, Dublin)
Nabil Kanso – Dance of Salome (first series)
Richard Lippold – Ex Stasis (sculpture)
Paul Matisse – Kendall Band (sound sculpture)
David K. Nelson, Jr. – Mirth & Girth
Louise Nevelson – Sky Landscape (sculpture)
Éamonn O'Doherty – Anna Livia (bronze installation, Dublin)
Fred Parhad – Ashurbanipal (bronze, San Francisco)
Zlatko Pounov and Steven Lowe – Mohandas K. Gandhi (sculpture, San Francisco)
Paula Rego – The Dance
Gerhard Richter – Betty
Susan Dorothea White – The First Supper
Christopher Wool – Apocalypse Now ("word painting")

19 March – Isabel Bishop, American painter and graphic artist (b. 1902).
28 March – Neil Williams, American painter (b. 1934).
31 March – Georges Lévis, French comic artist (b. 1924).
3 April – Milton Caniff, American cartoonist (b. 1907).
17 April – Louise Nevelson, Ukrainian-born American artist (b. 1900).
4 May – Stanley Hayter, English-born printmaker (b. 1901).
16 May – Charles Keeping, English illustrator, children's book author and lithographer (b. 1924).
16 June – Andrea Pazienza, Italian comics artist (b. 1956).

12 July – Julian Trevelyan, English printmaker (b.1910).
12 August – Jean-Michel Basquiat, American artist (b. 1960).
21 August – Ray Eames, American artist and architect (b. 1912).
26 September – Marianne Appel, American mural painter and puppet designer (b. 1913).
29 September – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (b. 1912).
12 November – Primo Conti, Italian Futurist artist (b. 1900).
25 November - Alphaeus Philemon Cole, American portrait artist (b. 1876 [sic.])
2 December – Kimon Evan Marengo, Egyptian-born British cartoonist (b. 1904).
30 December – Isamu Noguchi, Japanese American artist and landscape architect (b. 1904).
date unknown
- Reginald George Haggar, ceramic designer
- Chambré Hardman, Irish photographer (b. 1898).
- Nedeljko Gvozdenović, a world-renowned Serbian painter (b. 1902).