1920 in art

The year 1920 in art involved some significant events and new works.

Events

• February 1 – National Art Gallery opens in Tbilisi.
• November 7 – The "mass action" The Storming of the Winter Palace, directed by Nikolai Evreinov, is staged outside the Winter Palace in Petrograd.
• The Cologne Dadaist group is formed by Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Alfred Grünwald.
• Katherine Dreier, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp form Société Anonyme.
• Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada set up the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall.
• Heckscher Museum of Art established in Huntington, New York.
• Latvian Museum of Foreign Art established in Riga.
• Art historian Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler publishes Der Weg zum Kubismus ("The Rise of Cubism").

Works

Georges Clemenceau by Cecilia Beaux

War memorial at Bridgnorth, England by Adrian Jones

• Hans Baluschek – City of Workers
• Cecilia Beaux – portrait of Georges Clemenceau
• Thomas Hart Benton – People of Chilmark (figure composition)
• Pierre Bonnard – Landscape in Normandy
• Alexander Stirling Calder – Swann Memorial Fountain (Philadelphia)
• Sydney Carline – The Destruction of the Turkish Transport in the Gorge of the Wadi Fara, Palestine
• Lovis Corinth – Flowers and Wilhelmine
• Otto Dix
  • The Card Players (Kartenspieler)
  • The Match Vendor I
• Max Ernst
  • The Hat Makes the Man (collage and gouache)
  • Murdering Airplane (collage)
• George Frampton – Edith Cavell Memorial (London)
• James Earle Fraser – Frederick Keep Monument (Washington, D.C.)
• Daniel Chester French
  • Abraham Lincoln (statue in Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.)
  • Dupont Circle Fountain (Washington, D.C.)
  • Wisconsin (statue on Wisconsin State Capitol)
• J. W. Godward – A Red, Red Rose
• George Grosz – Republican Automatons
• Richard Jack – The Passing of the Chieftain
• Goscombe John – Equestrian statue of the Viscount Wolseley (London)
• Einar Jónsson – Thorfinn Karlsefni (bronze statue, Philadelphia)
• Eric Kennington – The Victims (retitled The Conquerors)
• Winifred Knights – The Deluge
• Boris Kustodiev
  • Blue House
  • The Bolshevik
  • Portrait of Isaak Brodsky
  • Trinity Day
• George Washington Lambert – A sergeant of the Light Horse
• Edwin Lutyens
  • The Cenotaph, Whitehall, London (stone version)
  • with Alfred Munnings (sculptor) – Equestrian statue of Edward Horner, St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset, England
• Paul Klee – Angelus Novus (worked copper plate)
• Stanton MacDonald-Wright – Airplane Synchromy in Yellow-Orange
• Henri Matisse – Interior at Nice
• Christopher R. W. Nevinson – The Soul of the Soulless City (originally New York – an Abstraction)
• William Nicholson
  • Gertrude Jekyll
  • Miss Jekyll's Gardening Boots
• Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin – 1918 in Petrograd (Petrograd Madonna)
• Victor Rousseau – Bronze figure group for Anglo-Belgian Memorial, London
• Charles Marie Louis Joseph Sarrabezolles – L'Âme de la France (plaster version)
• Georg Scholz – Industrial Farmers (Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal)
• Charles Sheeler – Church Street El
• Mario Sironi – Truck
• Stanley Spencer
  • The Last Supper
  • Christ Carrying the Cross
• Lorado Taft – Fountain of Time (Chicago)
• Aston Webb (architect) and Alfred Drury (sculptor) – London Troops War Memorial

Births

January to June

• January 12 – Bill Reid, Canadian artist (d. 1998).
• January 17 – Georges Pichard, French comics artist (d. 2003).
• January 30 – Patrick Heron, English painter, writer and designer (d. 1999).
• February 22 – Rocco Borella, Italian painter (d. 1994).
• March 3 – Ronald Searle, English cartoonist (d. 2011).
• March 14 – Hank Ketcham, American cartoonist (d. 2001).
• March 27 – Robin Jacques, English illustrator (d. 1995).
• April 8 – Hans Coper, German-born studio potter (d. 1981).
• April 24 – Paul Wonner, American painter (d. 2008).
• May – Hans Josephsohn, German-born sculptor (d. 2012).
• May 8
  • Saul Bass, American graphic designer and filmmaker (d. 1996).
  • Tom of Finland, Finnish fetish artist (d. 1991).
• May 10 - Erna Viitol, Estonian sculptor (d. 2001).
• June 4 – Alejandro Obregón, Colombian painter, muralist, sculptor and engraver (d. 1992).
• June 24
  • John Coplans, British-born painter and photographer (d. 2003)
  • Jimmy Ernst, German-born American painter (d. 1984).
• June 29 – Ray Harryhausen, American-born stop-motion animator, sculptor (d. 2013).

July to December

• July 20 – Arthur Boyd, Australian painter and sculptor (d. 1999).
• July 21 – Constant Nieuwenhuys, Dutch painter, one of the innovators of Unitary Urbanism (d. 2005).
• August 5 – George Tooker, American figurative painter (d. 2011).
• August 15 – Judy Cassab, born Judit Kaszab, Austrian-born Australian portrait painter (d. 2015).
• August 22 – Gene Davis, American painter (d. 1985).
• August 26
  • Mauri Favén, Finnish painter (d. 2006).
  • Brant Parker, American cartoonist (d. 2007).
• October 13 – Elaine Hamilton, American painter (d. 2010).
• October 31 – Helmut Newton, German-born photographer (d. 2004).
• November 23 – Wayne Thiebaud, American painter.
• November 30 – Walter Chandoha, American cat photographer (d. 2019).
• December 14 – Claire Fejes, American artist
• December 18 – Enrique Grau, Colombian painter and sculptor (d. 2004).
• December 21 – Bob Bindig, American illustrator (d. 2007)

Full date unknown

• Adrian Heath, Burmese-born English painter (d. 1992).
• Raymond Moore, English landscape photographer (d. 1987).
• Daniel O'Neill, Irish painter (d. 1974).

Deaths

• January 24 – Amedeo Modigliani, Italian-born painter and sculptor (b. 1884)
• January 26 – Jeanne Hébuterne, French artist, Modigliani's mistress and model (suicide) (b. 1898)
• March 13 – Mary Devens, American pictorial photographer (b. 1857)
• March 15 – Edith Holden, English nature artist and art teacher (b. 1871)
• March 26 – Samuel Colman, American painter and designer (b. 1832)
• April 20 – Briton Rivière, British painter (b. 1840)
• April 27 – Jacob Ungerer, German sculptor (b. 1840)
• May 7 – Hugh Thomson, British illustrator (b. 1860)
• May 12 – Georges Petit, French art dealer (b. 1856)
• July 17 – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, English studio potter (b. 1846)
• August 4 – C. G. Finch-Davies, British bird painter (b. 1875)
• August 6 – Edward Francis Searles, American interior designer (b. 1841)
• August 12 – Walter W. Winans, American sculptor, painter, marksman and horse-breeder (b. 1852)
• August 22 – Anders Zorn, Swedish portrait painter (b. 1860)
• September 24 – Peter Carl Fabergé, Russian-born jeweller (b. 1846)
• November 13 – Luc-Olivier Merson, French painter (b. 1846)
• date unknown – Edith Corbet, Australian-born British landscape painter (b. 1846)