1953 in art

Events from the year 1953 in art.

Events

 * November – New building for Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, the first major commission for Louis Kahn, opens.
 * Anthony Blunt's Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700 is published.
 * Yves Klein becomes a master at judo, receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan/degree black-belt) from the Kodokan in Japan.

Awards

 * Archibald Prize: Ivor Hele – Sir Henry Simpson Newland, CBE, DSO, MS, FRCS

Works

 * Hans Arp – Cloud Shepherd (sculpture, University City of Caracas)
 * Francis Bacon
 * Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
 * Two Figures (1953)
 * John Brack
 * Men's Wear
 * The New House
 * Alexander Calder – Acoustic Clouds (installation, University City of Caracas)
 * José Manuel Capuletti - Dama en la Playa
 * Edwin Dickinson – Ruin at Daphne (begun 1943; Metropolitan Museum of Art)
 * Dong Xiwen – The Founding Ceremony of the Nation (original version)
 * Jacob Epstein – Social Consciousness (sculpture group, Philadelphia)
 * M. C. Escher – Relativity (lithograph)
 * Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph (sculpture)
 * Edward Hopper – Office in a Small City (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
 * Willem de Kooning – Woman III
 * L. S. Lowry
 * Football Ground (Going to the Match)
 * Industrial Landscape
 * The Procession passing the Queen Victoria Memorial, Coronation
 * René Magritte – Golconda
 * Marino Marini – Horse and Rider (bronze)
 * Henri Matisse – The Snail (colored paper collage)
 * Roberto Matta – Cercle du Blé (Circle of Wheat) (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
 * Milton Menasco –  'La Troienne' and Her Foals: Eighteen Vignettes and One Painting Together in One Frame for John Whitney
 * Henry Moore – Draped Reclining Figure (bronze)
 * Alexander Phimister Proctor – John McLoughlin (bronze)
 * Jackson Pollock – Portrait and a Dream
 * Larry Rivers – Washington Crossing the Delaware
 * Mark Rothko – No. 61 (Rust and Blue)
 * Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov – In the Sun
 * Charles Sheeler – Ore Into Iron (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Exhibitions

 * October – Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings are exhibited at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in New York City.

Births

 * January 7 – Robert Longo, American painter and sculptor
 * January 9 – Javad Alizadeh, Iranian cartoonist and painter
 * February 25 – Martin Kippenberger, German artist (d. 1997)
 * April 24 – Eric Bogosian, American performance artist
 * May 18 – Helen Chadwick, English conceptual artist (d. 1996)
 * September 12 – Stephen Sprouse, American fashion designer and artist (d. 2004)
 * Full date unknown
 * Steven Campbell, Scottish figurative painter (d. 2007)
 * Michael Kenna, English landscape photographer
 * Kevin O'Neill, English comic book illustrator
 * Marjetica Potrč, Slovenian artist and architect

Deaths

 * February 1 – Archibald Nicoll, New Zealand painter (b. 1886)
 * February 12 – Uroš Predić, Serbian Realist painter (b. 1857)
 * March 23 – Raoul Dufy, French Fauvist painter (b. 1877)
 * March 26 – Đorđe Jovanović, Serbian sculptor (b. 1861)
 * April 15 – Charles R. Knight, American animal painter (b. 1874)
 * April 29
 * Moïse Kisling, Polish-born painter (b. 1891)
 * Alice Prin ("Kiki de Montparnasse"), French artist, model and entertainer (b. 1901)
 * June 23 – Albert Gleizes, French painter (b. 1881)
 * September 13 – Mary Brewster Hazelton, American portrait painter (b. 1868)
 * September 26 – Xu Beihong, Chinese painter (b. 1895)
 * October 2 – John Marin, American modernist painter (b. 1870)
 * October 6 – Vera Mukhina, Latvian-born Soviet sculptor (b. 1889)
 * October 11 – James Earle Fraser, American sculptor (b. 1876)
 * October 21 – Sir Muirhead Bone, British etcher (b. 1876)
 * November 30 – Francis Picabia, French painter and poet (b. 1879)
 * date unknown – J. Laurie Wallace, Irish American painter (b.1864)