1952 in art

Events

• August 29 – Composer John Cage's 4′33″, during which the performer does not play, premieres in Woodstock, New York.
• Eight younger British artists (Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull) are represented in the "New Aspects of British Sculpture" exhibition at the Venice Biennale which Herbert Read describes as the "Geometry of Fear".^[1] Britain also displays paintings by Graham Sutherland and Edward Wadsworth.
• 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.
• Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographic collection Images à la sauvette is published by Tériade in Paris.
• 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 I, Blue Nude II
  • Black Leaf on Green Background
  • La Négresse
  • The Sorrows of the King
• John Minton – The Death of Nelson
• Henry Moore – King and Queen (bronze)
• Jackson Pollock – Blue Poles
• Kay Sage – On the Contrary
• David Smith – Agricola I (sculpture)
• Dorothea Tanning – The Friend's Room
• Lovejoy Columns, Portland, Oregon, painted by Tom Stefopoulos

Exhibitions

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

Births

• March 22 – Bernard Pras, French plastics technician
• May 23 – Martin Parr, English documentary colour photographer
• August 13 – Herb Ritts, American photographer (d. 2002)
• October 20 – Derek Ridgers, English portrait and street culture photographer
• 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

References