1941 in art

Events from the year 1941 in art.

Events

 * March 17 – In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
 * July 14 – American art collector Peggy Guggenheim and German painter Max Ernst arrive in New York City, fleeing occupied Europe.
 * August – Evacuated paintings from the National Gallery in London are moved to underground storage at a slate quarry beneath Manod Mawr in North Wales.
 * October 24 – English artist Brian Stonehouse is captured as a Special Operations Executive agent in France.
 * October 31 – Work ceases on sculpting Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the United States, continued by Lincoln Borglum after the death in March of his father Gutzon Borglum.
 * December 8 – The exhibition American Negro Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries opens in Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery in New York City.
 * December 30 – Peggy Guggenheim marries the exiled Max Ernst in Virginia.
 * Ettore DeGrazia's work appears for the first time in Arizona Highways magazine.
 * African-American painter Jacob Lawrence completes his Migration Series.
 * German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, in hiding in the south of France, begins the autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel ("Life? or Theater?: A Song-play").
 * Indiana University Art Museum established in Bloomington.
 * The Art Center in La Jolla established in California.

Awards

 * Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Sir James Elder, KBE

Works

 * Ansel Adams – Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (photograph)
 * Ethel V. Ashton – Defenders of the Wyoming Country 1778 (United States post office mural, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania)
 * Max Beckmann – Double Portrait, Max Beckmann and Quappi
 * Peter Belov – 1941 ("Large Stalin and Red Army")
 * Paul Cadmus – Aviator
 * Paul Delvaux
 * The Anxious City
 * The Phases of the Moon
 * A. E. Doyle and Associates – Loyal B. Stearns Memorial Fountain (Portland, Oregon)
 * Sir Russell Drysdale – Moody's pub
 * Jacob Epstein – Jacob and the Angel (alabaster sculpture, 1940–1)
 * Ivon Hitchens
 * Damp Autumn
 * Interior, Boy in Bed
 * Edward Hopper – Girlie Show
 * Marcel Jean – Armoire Surréaliste
 * Yousuf Karsh – The Roaring Lion (photographic portrait of Winston Churchill)
 * Dame Laura Knight – In For Repairs
 * Alonzo Victor Lewis – Dr. Mark A. Matthews (bronze bust, Denny Park (Seattle))
 * Musa McKim – Wildlife in White Mountain and Philip Guston – Pulp Wood Logging (murals at Federal Building (Laconia, New Hampshire))
 * Roberto Matta
 * Composition Abstraite
 * Ecouter Vivre
 * Foeu
 * The Initiation (Origine d’un Extrême)
 * Invasion of the Night
 * Théorie de l’Arbre
 * Paul Nash
 * Battle of Britain
 * Totes Meer
 * John Petts – Alun Lewis
 * Pablo Picasso
 * Dora Maar au Chat
 * Tete de femme (Dora Maar) (sculpture)
 * Horace Pippin – Self-portrait
 * Albin Polasek – Masaryk Memorial, Chicago
 * Victor Vasarely – Untitled
 * Carel Weight
 * Escape of the Zebra from the Zoo during an Air Raid
 * It happened to us – daylight raid

Births

 * April 13 – Jean-Marc Reiser, French comics artist (d. 1983)
 * May 23 – Martin Puryear, American sculptor
 * June 7 – Tony Ray-Jones, English photographer (d. 1972)
 * July 12 – Richard Tuttle, American postminimalist sculptor, painter and installation artist
 * July 22 – Vaughn Bodē, American underground comix, graphic design and graffiti artist (d. 1975)
 * August 29 – Ugo Nespolo, Italian painter and filmmaker
 * September 20 – Dale Chihuly, American glass sculptor.
 * September 24 – Linda McCartney, née Eastman, American music photographer (d. 1998)
 * December 6 – Bruce Nauman, American installation and video artist
 * December 31 – Robert Lenkiewicz, English painter (d. 2002)
 * date unknown
 * Mary Kelly, American conceptual artist
 * James Coleman, Irish installation and video artist
 * Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq, Canadian Inuit artist

Deaths

 * January 10 – John Lavery, Irish painter and war artist (b. 1856)
 * February 6 – Maximilien Luce, French painter (b. 1858)
 * March 6 – Gutzon Borglum, American sculptor (b. 1867)
 * March 30 – Bertha Jaques, American etcher (b. 1863)
 * April 14 – Guillermo Kahlo, German-Mexican photographer (b. 1871)
 * April 16 – Émile Bernard, French Post-Impressionist painter (b. 1868)
 * October 25 – Robert Delaunay, French painter (b. 1885)
 * November 7 – Frank Pick, English transport administrator and patron of art and design (b. 1878)
 * December 3 – Pavel Filonov, Russian painter and poet (b. 1883)
 * December 5 – Amrita Sher-Gil, Indian painter (b. 1913)
 * December 30 – El Lissitzky, Russian designer, architect and photographer (b. 1890)
 * date unknown – William Jacob Baer, American miniature painter (b. 1860)