1946 in art

Events

• The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism is founded by Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, and others.
• The Borough Group of artists is founded in London by Cliff Holden.
• Jean Dubuffet exhibits the series of works with paint mixed with sand and gravel, Hautes Pâtes, at the Galérie René Drouin.
• Sidney Nolan begins his first series of paintings of Ned Kelly.
• David Olère begins to produce artworks based on his experiences as Jewish Sonderkommando inmate 106144 of Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – L C Robson, MC, MA

Works

• Harold Abbott – Triptych of Suffering
• George Ault – Bright Light at Russell's Corners
• Francis Bacon
  • Painting (1946)
  • Study for Man with Microphones (later abandoned and slashed by the artist)
• Charles Comfort – Dieppe Raid
• Salvador Dalí – The Temptation of St. Anthony
• Jean Dubuffet – Apartment Houses
• Jacob Epstein – Bust of Winston Churchill
• M. C. Escher – lithographs
  • Magic Mirror
  • Three Spheres II
• Sawlaram Haldankar – Glow of Hope
• Barbara Hepworth – sculptures
  • Pelagos
  • Tides
• Edward Hopper – Approaching a City
• Dame Laura Knight – The Dock, Nuremberg
• L. S. Lowry – Good Friday, Daisy Nook
• Henri Matisse – L'Asie
• Georgia O'Keeffe – Bare Tree Trunks With Snow
• Pablo Picasso – Woman-Flower
• William Scott – The Frying Pan
• Andrew Wyeth – Winter 1946
• Jack Butler Yeats
  • Men of Destiny
  • The Whistle of a Jacket

Exhibitions

• Contemporary British Art – Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and the City Art Museum, St Louis.

Births

• January 18 – Kirk Varnedoe, American art historian, writer and curator (d. 2003)
• January 26 – Timothy Clifford, English art historian and curator
• February 2 – David Gopito, Zimbabwean sculptor
• April 11 – Chris Burden, American performance and installation artist and sculptor (d. 2015)
• June 29 – Egon von Fürstenberg, Swiss fashion designer (d. 2004)
• July 6 – Jamie Wyeth, American realist painter
• July 25 – Nicole Farhi, French sculptor and fashion designer
• September 27 – T. C. Cannon, Native American painter (d. 1978)
• November 4 – Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer (d. 1989).
• November 5 – Herman Brood, Dutch musician, painter and media personality (d. 2001)
• November 20 – Alice Aycock, American sculptor and installation artist
• December 2 – Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer (k. 1997)
• December 8 – Jacques Bourboulon, French nude and fashion photographer
• December 12 – Don Gummer, American sculptor
• December 25 – Christopher Frayling, English cultural historian
• Full date unknown – Betty Beaumont, Canadian American site-specific artist, all media

Deaths

• February 17
  • Dorothy Gibson, American artist's model and silent film actress (b. 1889)
  • Sir George Pirie, Scottish painter (b. 1863)
• July 11 – Paul Nash, English painter (b. 1889)
• July 13 – Alfred Stieglitz, American photographer (b. 1864)
• July 17 – Florence Fuller, Australian painter (b. 1867)
• October 28 – Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Chilean painter (b. 1887)
• October 30 – Charles Despiau, French sculptor (b. 1874)
• November 23 – Arthur Dove, American abstract painter (b. 1880)
• November 24 – László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian painter and photographer (b. 1895)
• December 28 – Elie Nadelman, Polish-born American sculptor (b. 1882)
• Full date unknown – Arnold Friedman, American Modernist painter (b. 1874)