1988 in art

Events from the year 1988 in art.

Events

 * Opening of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, designed by Steven Holl
 * Donatello's bronze Judith and Holofernes is replaced on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence by a replica and moved inside the Palazzo Vecchio.
 * David Hockney begins a series of paintings at his seaside home in Malibu, California.

Exhibitions

 * July – Freeze, Surrey Docks, London
 * September 18 until September 24 - White Room: Bill Albertini at White Columns in New York City.

Awards

 * Archibald Prize: Fred Cress – John Beard
 * Turner Prize – Tony Cragg

Works

 * Artists of Ramingining, Northern Territory, Australia – Aboriginal Memorial
 * Francis Bacon – Second Version of Triptych 1944
 * Gordon Bennett – Outsider
 * Wayne Chabre
 * Gargoyles (Eugene, Oregon)
 * Alan Turing
 * Drosophila Fly Head
 * Grasshopper (sculpture, Salem, Oregon)
 * Eldon Garnet – Little Glenn (bronze statue)
 * Rachel Joynt – People's Island (brass installation, Dublin)
 * Nabil Kanso – Dance of Salome (first series)
 * Chris Killip – In Flagrante (photographic book)
 * Judith Weinshall Liberman – Holocaust Wall Hangings (first works in series)
 * Richard Lippold – Ex Stasis (sculpture)
 * Paul Matisse – Kendall Band (sound sculpture)
 * David K. Nelson, Jr. – Mirth & Girth
 * Louise Nevelson – Sky Landscape (sculpture)
 * Éamonn O'Doherty – Anna Livia (bronze installation, Dublin)
 * Fred Parhad – Ashurbanipal (bronze, San Francisco)
 * Zlatko Pounov and Steven Lowe – Statue of Mahatma Gandhi (San Francisco)
 * Paula Rego – The Dance
 * Gerhard Richter – Betty
 * Susan Dorothea White – The First Supper
 * Christopher Wool – Apocalypse Now ("word painting")

Births

 * 12 September – Alireza Shojaian, Iranian painter

January to June

 * 19 January – Cesare Brandi, art critic, historian, and specialist in conservation-restoration theory (b. 1906).
 * 31 January – Nedeljko Gvozdenović, a world-renowned Serbian painter (b. 1902).
 * 3 February – Ronald Bladen, American sculptor (b. 1918).
 * 19 March – Isabel Bishop, American painter and graphic artist (b. 1902).
 * 28 March – Neil Williams, American painter (b. 1934).
 * 31 March – Georges Lévis, French comic artist (b. 1924).
 * 2 April – E. Chambré Hardman, Irish-born British photographer (b. 1898).
 * 3 April – Milton Caniff, American cartoonist (b. 1907).
 * 17 April
 * Toni Frissell, American photographer (b. 1907]).
 * Louise Nevelson, Ukrainian-born American artist (b. 1900).
 * 26 April – Guy Boyd, Australian potter and figurative sculptor (b. 1923)
 * 4 May – Stanley Hayter, English-born printmaker (b. 1901).
 * 6 May – Constantino Nivola, Italian sculptor (b. 1911)
 * 16 May – Charles Keeping, English illustrator, children's book author and lithographer (b. 1924).
 * 16 June – Andrea Pazienza, Italian comics artist (b. 1956).

July to December

 * 12 July – Julian Trevelyan, English printmaker (b. 1910).
 * 24 July – Mira Schendel, Swiss-born Brazilian modernist artist and poet (b. 1919).
 * 12 August – Jean-Michel Basquiat, American neo-expressionist painter, suicide (b. 1960).
 * 21 August – Ray Eames, American artist and architect (b. 1912).
 * 26 September – Marianne Appel, American mural painter and puppet designer (b. 1913).
 * 29 September – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (b. 1912).
 * 28 October – Pietro Annigoni, Italian painter (b. 1910)
 * 12 November – Primo Conti, Italian Futurist artist (b. 1900).
 * 25 November – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, American portrait artist (b. 1876 [sic.])
 * 2 December – Kimon Evan Marengo, Egyptian-born British cartoonist (b. 1904).
 * 30 December – Isamu Noguchi, Japanese American artist and landscape architect (b. 1904).

Date unknown

 * Reginald George Haggar, English ceramic designer (b. 1905).