1921 in art

Events from the year 1921 in art.

Events

 * March – Puhl & Wagner are contracted to decorate the interior of the Golden Hall (Stockholm City Hall) with neo-Byzantine mosaics designed by Einar Forseth.
 * September–October – 5x5=25 abstract art exhibition held in Moscow.
 * The experimental short documentary film Manhatta is shot by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand in New York City.
 * Thomas Gainsborough's c. 1770 portrait The Blue Boy from the collection of the Duke of Westminster is sold by dealer Joseph Duveen to California magnate Henry E. Huntington for $728,800 (£182,200; equivalent to $ million in ), according to Duveen's bill, a record price for any painting at this time.
 * Paul Sérusier publishes his ABC of Painting.
 * André Delatte opens his glasswares studio in Nancy.
 * Simon Rodia begins construction of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles.

Awards

 * Archibald Prize: W B McInnes – Desbrowe Annear

Works

 * Carlo Carrà – The Engineer's Lover
 * Dora Carrington – Farm at Watendlath
 * Charles Demuth – Incense of a New Church
 * Guy Pène du Bois – An American Oriental
 * Marcel Duchamp – Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? (assisted readymade)
 * Max Ernst – The Elephant Celebes
 * Jean Louis Germos - Matoax
 * Lady Feodora Gleichen – 37th (British) Division memorial (Monchy-le-Preux, France)
 * Daniel Chester French – Statue of the Marquis de Lafayette
 * J. W. Godward – Megilla
 * Duncan Grant – Bathers by the Pond
 * Auguste Herbin – Le Cateau-Cambrésis
 * Edward Hopper – Girl at Sewing Machine
 * Seán Keating – Men of the South
 * Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
 * Two Brothers
 * View of Basel and the Rhine
 * Boris Kustodiev – Portrait of Chaliapin
 * Fernand Léger
 * Man and Woman
 * Still Life with a Beer Mug
 * Wyndham Lewis – Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro
 * Sir Bertram Mackennal – Bronze equestrian statue of King Edward VII (Waterloo Place, London)
 * Piet Mondrian
 * Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue
 * Tableau I
 * Paul Moreau-Vauthier – Western Front demarcation stones
 * Edvard Munch – Model by the Wicker Chair
 * Alfred Munnings – The Red Prince Mare
 * Francis Picabia
 * The Cacodylic Eye
 * Cannibale
 * Pablo Picasso
 * Reading the Letter
 * Three Musicians (two versions)
 * Three Women at the Spring
 * Man Ray (with Erik Satie) – The Gift (readymade sculpture)
 * Stanley Spencer
 * Christ's Entry into Jerusalem
 * Crucifixion
 * Félix Vallotton – Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau
 * Han van Meegeren – Hertje ("The fawn")

January to June

 * January 1 – César Baldaccini, French sculptor (d. 1998)
 * January 3 – Bill Gold, American graphic designer (d. 2018)
 * January 14 – Norris Embry, American neo-expressionist painter (d. 1981)
 * January 24 – Sybil Connolly, Welsh-Irish fashion designer (d. 1998)
 * January 27 – Georges Mathieu, French abstract painter (d. 2012)
 * February 2 – Pietro Cascella, Italian painter and sculptor (d. 2008)
 * February 5 – Ken Adam, German-born British film set designer (d. 2016)
 * February 13 – Louis Féraud, French fashion designer and artist (d. 1999)
 * February 20 – Michael Ayrton, English sculptor, graphic artist and writer (d. 1975)
 * February 22 – Cecil King, Irish abstract-minimalist painter (d. 1986)
 * February 23 – John Latham, Zambian conceptual artist (d. 2006)
 * March 2 – Ernst Haas, Austrian photographer (d. 1986)
 * March 13 – Al Jaffee, American cartoonist (d. 2023)
 * March 28 – Norman Bluhm, American painter (d. 1999)
 * April 21 – Dimitrije Bašičević, Serbian painter and sculptor (d. 1987)
 * April 23 – William Brice, American painter and teacher (d. 2008)
 * April 25 – Karel Appel, Dutch painter, sculptor and poet (d. 2006)
 * May 18 – Joan Eardley, British painter (d. 1963)
 * May 29 – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (d. 1981)
 * June 20 – Fiore de Henriquez, Italian-born British sculptor (d. 2004)

July to December

 * July 16
 * Ernst Beyeler, Swiss art dealer and collector (d. 2010)
 * Guy Laroche, French fashion designer (d. 1989)
 * July 16 – Boscoe Holder, Trinidadian painter (d. 2007)
 * July 17 – Richard Jeranian, Armenian painter, draftsman and lithographer (d. 2019)
 * August 4 – Jean Pierre Capron, French painter (d. 1997)
 * August 18 – Zdzisław Żygulski, Jr., Polish art historian (d. 2015)
 * August 28 – Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, French photographer (d. 2004)
 * September 22 – Will Elder, American illustrator and comic book artist (d. 2008)
 * September 25 – Jacques Martin, French comics creator (d. 2010)
 * September 27 – Jean-Pierre Sudre, French photographer (d. 1997)
 * October 26 – Raymond Nasher, American art collector (d. 2007)
 * November 12 – Gerson Leiber, American painter, lithographer and sculptor (d. 2018)
 * November 17 – Albert Bertelsen, Danish artist (d. 2019)
 * November 26 – Françoise Gilot, French watercolorist and ceramicist (d. 2023)

Deaths

 * January 18 – Adolf von Hildebrand, sculptor (born 1847)
 * January 30 – John Francis Murphy, landscape painter (born 1853)
 * February 2 – Antonio Jacobsen, Danish-American maritime artist (born 1850)
 * February 3 – William Strang, painter and engraver (born 1859)
 * February 4 – Eugène Burnand, Swiss painter (born 1850)
 * February 11 – William Blake Richmond, English painter and designer (born 1842)
 * February 21 – George Dunlop Leslie, English genre painter (born 1835)
 * March 2 – Johann Friedrich Engel, German painter (born 1844)
 * March 23 – Jean-Paul Laurens, painter and sculptor (born 1838)
 * March 24 – Marcus Stone, painter and illustrator (born 1840)
 * March 30 – Franz Benque, photographer (born 1841)
 * April 6 – Vardges Sureniants, Armenian painter (born 1860)
 * April 30 – Mabel Esplin, English stained-glass artist (born 1874)
 * May 5 – William Friese-Greene, photographer and cinematographer (born 1855)
 * May 29 – Abbott Handerson Thayer, painter (born 1849)
 * June – Frank Enders, painter and etcher (born 1860)
 * October 7 – John Thomson, photographer (born 1837)
 * November 1 – Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, painter (born 1848)
 * November 12 – Fernand Khnopff, Symbolist painter (born 1858)
 * November 13 – William Robert Colton, sculptor (born 1867)