1920 in art

Events from the year 1920 in art.

Events

 * February 1 – The National Art Gallery of Georgia opens in Tbilisi.
 * March 17 – The Edith Cavell Memorial, by George Frampton, is unveiled in London.
 * March 27 – Society of Wood Engravers founded in the United Kingdom.
 * June 30–August 25 – The first Dadaist Fair is held in Berlin (Tempelhof). The Cologne group is formed by Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Alfred Grünwald.
 * August 5 – Publication of the 'Realistic Manifesto', a Constructivist text, by Naum Gabo with his brother Anton Pevsner in Moscow.
 * November 7 – The "mass action" The Storming of the Winter Palace, directed by Nikolai Evreinov, is staged outside the Winter Palace in Petrograd.
 * unknown dates
 * Katherine Dreier, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp form Société Anonyme.
 * Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada set up the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall.
 * The Heckscher Museum of Art is established in Huntington, New York.
 * The Latvian Museum of Foreign Art is established in Riga.
 * Droit de suite is introduced in France.

Works



 * Hans Baluschek – City of Workers
 * Cecilia Beaux – portrait of Georges Clemenceau
 * Thomas Hart Benton – People of Chilmark (figure composition)
 * Pierre Bonnard – Paysage normand
 * Alexander Stirling Calder – Swann Memorial Fountain (Philadelphia)
 * Sydney Carline – The Destruction of the Turkish Transport in the Gorge of the Wadi Fara, Palestine
 * Lovis Corinth – Flowers and Wilhelmine
 * Otto Dix
 * The Card Players (Kartenspieler)
 * The Match Vendor I
 * Max Ernst
 * The Hat Makes the Man (collage and gouache)
 * Murdering Airplane (collage)
 * James Earle Fraser – Frederick Keep Monument (Washington, D.C.)
 * Daniel Chester French
 * Abraham Lincoln (statue in Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.)
 * Dupont Circle Fountain (Washington, D.C.)
 * Wisconsin (statue on Wisconsin State Capitol)
 * J. W. Godward – A Red, Red Rose
 * George Grosz – Republican Automatons
 * Richard Jack – The Passing of the Chieftain
 * Goscombe John – Equestrian statue of the Viscount Wolseley (London)
 * Einar Jónsson – Thorfinn Karlsefni (bronze statue, Philadelphia)
 * Eric Kennington – The Victims (retitled The Conquerors)
 * Winifred Knights – The Deluge
 * Boris Kustodiev
 * Blue House
 * The Bolshevik
 * Portrait of Isaak Brodsky
 * Trinity Day
 * George Washington Lambert – A sergeant of the Light Horse
 * Edwin Lutyens
 * The Cenotaph, Whitehall, London (stone version)
 * with Alfred Munnings (sculptor) – Equestrian statue of Edward Horner, St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset, England
 * Paul Klee – Angelus Novus (worked copper plate)
 * Stanton Macdonald-Wright – Airplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange
 * Henri Matisse – Interior at Nice
 * C. R. W. Nevinson – The Soul of the Soulless City (originally New York – an Abstraction)
 * William Nicholson
 * Gertrude Jekyll
 * Miss Jekyll's Gardening Boots
 * Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin – 1918 in Petrograd (Petrograd Madonna)
 * Victor Rousseau – Bronze figure group for Anglo-Belgian Memorial, London
 * Charles Marie Louis Joseph Sarrabezolles – L'Âme de la France (plaster version)
 * Georg Scholz – Industrial Farmers (Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal)
 * Charles Sheeler – Church Street El
 * Mario Sironi – Truck
 * Stanley Spencer
 * The Last Supper
 * Christ Carrying the Cross
 * Lorado Taft – Fountain of Time (Chicago)
 * Aston Webb (architect) and Alfred Drury (sculptor) – London Troops War Memorial

Publications

 * Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler – Der Weg zum Kubismus ("The Rise of Cubism").

January to June

 * January 12 – Bill Reid, Canadian artist (d. 1998).
 * January 17 – Georges Pichard, French comics artist (d. 2003).
 * January 30 – Patrick Heron, English painter, writer and designer (d. 1999).
 * February 22 – Rocco Borella, Italian painter (d. 1994).
 * March 3 – Ronald Searle, English cartoonist (d. 2011).
 * March 14 – Hank Ketcham, American cartoonist (d. 2001).
 * March 19 – Kjell Aukrust, Norwegian poet and artist (d. 2002)
 * March 27 – Robin Jacques, English illustrator (d. 1995).
 * April 8 – Hans Coper, German-born studio potter (d. 1981).
 * April 24 – Paul Wonner, American painter (d. 2008).
 * April 26 – Maynard Reece, American painter (d. 2020)
 * May – Hans Josephsohn, German-born sculptor (d. 2012).
 * May 8
 * Saul Bass, American graphic designer and filmmaker (d. 1996).
 * Tom of Finland, Finnish fetish artist (d. 1991).
 * May 10 - Erna Viitol, Estonian sculptor (d. 2001).
 * June 4 – Alejandro Obregón, Colombian painter, muralist, sculptor and engraver (d. 1992).
 * June 24
 * John Coplans, British-born painter and photographer (d. 2003)
 * Jimmy Ernst, German-born American painter (d. 1984).
 * June 29 – Ray Harryhausen, American-born stop-motion animator, sculptor (d. 2013).

July to December

 * July 20 – Arthur Boyd, Australian painter and sculptor (d. 1999).
 * July 21 – Constant Nieuwenhuys, Dutch painter, one of the innovators of Unitary Urbanism (d. 2005).
 * August 1 – Ken Bald, American comic book artist and illustrator (d. 2019)
 * August 5 – George Tooker, American figurative painter (d. 2011).
 * August 9 – Gerda Schmidt-Panknin, German painter (d. 2021)
 * August 15 – Judy Cassab, born Judit Kaszab, Austrian-born Australian portrait painter (d. 2015).
 * August 22 – Gene Davis, American painter (d. 1985).
 * August 26
 * Mauri Favén, Finnish painter (d. 2006).
 * Brant Parker, American cartoonist (d. 2007).
 * August 30 – Leonid Shvartsman, Soviet and Russian animator and artist (d. 2022).
 * October 13 – Elaine Hamilton, American painter (d. 2010).
 * October 31 – Helmut Newton, German-born photographer (d. 2004).
 * November 23 – Wayne Thiebaud, American painter (d. 2021)
 * November 30 – Walter Chandoha, American cat photographer (d. 2019).
 * December 14 – Claire Fejes, American artist
 * December 18 – Enrique Grau, Colombian painter and sculptor (d. 2004).
 * December 21 – Bob Bindig, American illustrator (d. 2007)

Full date unknown

 * Adrian Heath, Burmese-born English painter (d. 1992).
 * Raymond Moore, English landscape photographer (d. 1987).
 * Daniel O'Neill, Irish painter (d. 1974).

Deaths

 * January 24 – Amedeo Modigliani, Italian-born painter and sculptor (b. 1884)
 * January 26 – Jeanne Hébuterne, French artist, Modigliani's mistress and model (suicide) (b. 1898)
 * March 3 – Theodor Philipsen, Danish painter (b. 1840)
 * March 13 – Mary Devens, American pictorial photographer (b. 1857)
 * March 15 – Edith Holden, English nature artist and art teacher (b. 1871)
 * March 26 – Samuel Colman, American painter and designer (b. 1832)
 * April 20 – Briton Rivière, British painter (b. 1840)
 * April 27 – Jacob Ungerer, German sculptor (b. 1840)
 * May 7 – Hugh Thomson, British illustrator (b. 1860)
 * May 12 – Georges Petit, French art dealer (b. 1856)
 * July 5 – Max Klinger, German painter and sculptor (b. 1857)
 * July 14 – Albert von Keller, German painter (b. 1844)
 * July 17 – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, English studio potter (b. 1846)
 * August 4 – C. G. Finch-Davies, British bird painter (b. 1875)
 * August 6 – Edward Francis Searles, American interior designer (b. 1841)
 * August 12 – Walter W. Winans, American sculptor, painter, marksman and horse-breeder (b. 1852)
 * August 22 – Anders Zorn, Swedish portrait painter (b. 1860)
 * September 24 – Peter Carl Fabergé, Russian-born jeweller (b. 1846)
 * November 13 – Luc-Olivier Merson, French painter (b. 1846)
 * date unknown – Edith Corbet, Australian-born British landscape painter (b. 1846)