1940 in art

Events from the year 1940 in art.

Events

 * February – The series of 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' propaganda posters by 'Fougasse' is published by the Ministry of Information (United Kingdom).
 * March – The Tartu Art Museum is officially established in Tartu, Estonia; its first exhibition is opened in November 1940.
 * July – The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) of the Nazi Party begins its task of appropriating cultural property from occupied territories, initially in France.
 * October – Grandma Moses' second solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted", opens at Otto Kallir's Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York City.
 * November 3 – The War Artists' Advisory Committee of the U.K. Ministry of Information opens its first exhibition of War Pictures by British Artists to the public at the otherwise-evacuated National Gallery in London.
 * November 13 – Release of Walt Disney's animated movie Fantasia in the United States.
 * December 8 – Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera remarry in San Francisco (U.S.)
 * Cecil Beaton is among the photographers commissioned by the U.K. Ministry of Information to undertake war photography.
 * Xawery Dunikowski is deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he survives until 1945.
 * Jacques Lipchitz flees France for the United States.
 * Henry Moore is commissioned as a war artist and produces drawings of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from The Blitz.
 * Anthony Blunt's Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600 is published. This year he is recruited to work for MI5 while simultaneously spying for the NKVD.

Awards

 * Archibald Prize: Max Meldrum – Dr J Forbes McKenzie

Paintings

 * Vanessa Bell – Leonard Woolf
 * Pierre Bonnard – Oranges et Kakis (c.)
 * Clive Branson – Noreen and Rosa
 * Howard Chandler Christy – Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States
 * Charles Cundall – The Withdrawal from Dunkirk, June 1940
 * Salvador Dalí
 * The Face of War
 * Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire
 * 'Fougasse' – Careless Talk Costs Lives (propaganda posters)
 * Jared French – Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler (series of nude portraits)
 * Jesús Guerrero Galván – Head of a Woman
 * Edward Hopper
 * Gas
 * Office at Night
 * Frida Kahlo
 * The Dream
 * Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser
 * Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair
 * Self-Portrait with Monkey
 * Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
 * The Wounded Table
 * Raymond McGrath – Training Aircraft Under Construction
 * Conroy Maddox – The Strange Country
 * Henri Matisse
 * La Blouse Roumaine
 * Le Rêve de 1940
 * Roberto Matta – Dark Light
 * John Piper
 * Interior of Coventry Cathedral, November 15th, 1940
 * The Passage to the Control-room at South West Regional Headquarters, Bristol
 * St Mary le Port, Bristol
 * Candido Portinari – Seascape
 * Eric Ravilious – Watercolours
 * A Warship in Dock
 * Submarines in Dry Dock
 * Ship's Screw on a Railway Truck
 * Midnight Sun
 * Charles Sheeler
 * Bucks County Barn
 * Fugue
 * Interior
 * Situ Qiao – Put Down Your Whip
 * Graham Sutherland
 * Black Landscape
 * Devastation, 1940: A House on the Welsh Border
 * Hugh J. Ward – Portrait of Superman (Lehman College)
 * Carel Willink – Wilma with Cat
 * Grant Wood – Sentimental Ballad

Photographs

 * Herbert Mason – St Paul's Survives
 * Nickolas Muray – Soldiers of the Sky

Sculptures

 * Eric Aumonier – The Archer (East Finchley tube station, London Passenger Transport Board)
 * Carl Milles – The Wedding of the Waters (fountain, St. Louis, Missouri)
 * Isamu Noguchi – News (stainless steel bas-relief, Rockefeller Center, New York)
 * Attilio Piccirilli – Guglielmo Marconi (bronze, Washington, D.C.)
 * José Ângelo Cottinelli Telmo (architect) and Leopoldo de Almeida (sculptor) – Padrão dos Descobrimentos (temporary version)

Exhibitions

 * Saved from Europe at Galerie St. Etienne in New York City

Births

 * January – Anthony d'Offay, British art dealer
 * January 2 – Peter Young, American painter
 * January 6 – John Byrne, Scottish painter and writer
 * January 24
 * Vito Acconci, American conceptual artist, installation artist, performance artist and filmmaker (d. 2017)
 * Mel Bochner, American conceptual artist
 * February 22 – Billy Name, born William Linich, Jr., American photographer, collaborator with Andy Warhol
 * March 7 – Hannah Wilke, American painter, sculptor and photographer (d. 1993)
 * March 20 – Mary Ellen Mark, American photographer (d. 2015)
 * April 11 – Marcia Tucker, American museum curator (d. 2006)
 * April 16 – Joan Snyder, American painter
 * April 30 – Burt Young, born Gerald DeLouise, American actor, painter and author
 * May 1 – Elsa Peretti, Italian jewelry designer (d. 2021)
 * May 11 – Juan Downey, Chilean-American video artist (d. 1993)
 * May 25 – Nobuyoshi Araki, Japanese photographer
 * June 17 – Alton Kelley, American poster and album artist (d. 2008)
 * July 5 – Chuck Close, American "photorealistic" painter (d. 2021)
 * July 27 – Pina Bausch, German neo-expressionist choreographer and dancer (d. 2009)
 * August 23 – Galen Rowell, American wilderness photographer (d. 2002)
 * September 6 – Elizabeth Murray, American painter, printmaker and draughtsman (d. 2007)
 * September 10 – David Mann, American painter
 * September 26 – Arno Rink, German painter and professor
 * September 27 – Rudolph Moshammer, German fashion designer (d. 2005)
 * October 22 – Ashley Jackson, Malaysian-born Yorkshire landscape watercolourist
 * date unknown
 * Germano Celant, Italian art critic, curator and historian (d. 2020)
 * Stevan Knežević, Serbian painter, sculptor and professor of art (d. 1995)
 * Anthony McCall, British-born American avant-garde installation artist, projected film
 * Dušan Otašević, Serbian painter and sculptor
 * Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Native American painter and printmaker

Deaths

 * January 18 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian American landscape painter (b. 1880)
 * February 11 – Ellen Day Hale, American painter and printmaker (b. 1855)
 * February 27 – Nicolae Tonitza, Romanian painter and etcher (b. 1886)
 * March 16 – Iso Rae, Australian Impressionist painter (b. 1860)
 * April 15 – Alexandru Plămădeală, Moldovan sculptor (b. 1888)
 * May 13 - Henry Charles Fehr, British sculptor (b. 1867)
 * June 21 – Édouard Vuillard, French painter (b. 1868)
 * June 29 – Paul Klee, Swiss painter expressionism, cubism, and surrealism (b. 1879)
 * July 4 – Józef Pankiewicz, Polish painter, graphic artist and teacher (b. 1866)
 * July 28 – Gerda Wegener, Danish artist (b. 1886)
 * July 31 – Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, German avant-garde painter, by involuntary euthanasia (b. 1899)
 * August 22 – Paul Gösch, German artist and architect (b. 1885)
 * September 15 – Dick Ket, Dutch painter (b. 1902)
 * September 27 – Walter Benjamin, German philosopher, "comparatist" and art critic (b. 1892)
 * October 15 – Karl Uchermann, Norwegian canine painter (b. 1855)
 * November 16 – Colin Gill, English war artist, muralist and portrait painter (b. 1892).
 * November 17 – Eric Gill, English sculptor and engraver (b. 1882)
 * date unknown – Francesco Stella, Italian painter and set designer (b. 1862)