# 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
* Alberto Burri - Rosso Gobbo
* 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)