# 1921 in art

Events from the year 1921 in art.

## Events

* March – Puhl & Wagner are contracted to decorate the interior of the Golden Hall (Stockholm City Hall) with neo-Byzantine mosaics designed by Einar Forseth.
* September–October – 5x5=25 abstract art exhibition held in Moscow.
* The experimental short documentary film Manhatta is shot by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand in New York City.
* Thomas Gainsborough's c. 1770 portrait The Blue Boy from the collection of the Duke of Westminster is sold by dealer Joseph Duveen to California magnate Henry E. Huntington for $728,800 (£182,200; equivalent to $12.3 million in 2023), according to Duveen's bill, a record price for any painting at this time.
* Paul Sérusier publishes his ABC of Painting.
* André Delatte opens his glasswares studio in Nancy.
* Simon Rodia begins construction of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles.

## Awards

* Archibald Prize: W B McInnes – Desbrowe Annear
* Carlo Carrà – The Engineer's Lover
* Dora Carrington – Farm at Watendlath
* Charles Demuth – Incense of a New Church
* Guy Pène du Bois – An American Oriental
* Marcel Duchamp – Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? (assisted readymade)
* Max Ernst – The Elephant Celebes
* Jean-Léon Gérôme - Matoax
* Lady Feodora Gleichen – 37th (British) Division memorial (Monchy-le-Preux, France)
* Daniel Chester French – Statue of the Marquis de Lafayette
* J. W. Godward – Megilla
* Duncan Grant – Bathers by the Pond
* Auguste Herbin – Le Cateau-Cambrésis
* Edward Hopper – Girl at Sewing Machine
* Wassily Kandinsky - Weisses Oval (White Oval)
* Seán Keating – Men of the South
* Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
** Two Brothers
** View of Basel and the Rhine
* Boris Kustodiev – Portrait of Chaliapin
* Fernand Léger
** Man and Woman
** Still Life with a Beer Mug
* Wyndham Lewis – Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro
* Sir Bertram Mackennal – Bronze equestrian statue of King Edward VII (Waterloo Place, London)
* Piet Mondrian
** Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue
** Tableau I
* Paul Moreau-Vauthier – Western Front demarcation stones
* Edvard Munch – Model by the Wicker Chair
* Alfred Munnings – The Red Prince Mare
* Francis Picabia
** The Cacodylic Eye
** Cannibale
* Pablo Picasso
** Reading the Letter
** Three Musicians (two versions)
** Three Women at the Spring
* Man Ray (with Erik Satie) – The Gift (readymade sculpture)
* Stanley Spencer
** Christ's Entry into Jerusalem
** Crucifixion
* Félix Vallotton – Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau
* Han van Meegeren – Hertje ("The fawn")

## Births
### January to June

* January 1 – César Baldaccini, French sculptor (d. 1998)
* January 3 – Bill Gold, American graphic designer (d. 2018)
* January 14 – Norris Embry, American neo-expressionist painter (d. 1981)
* January 24 – Sybil Connolly, Welsh-Irish fashion designer (d. 1998)
* January 27 – Georges Mathieu, French abstract painter (d. 2012)
* February 2 – Pietro Cascella, Italian painter and sculptor (d. 2008)
* February 5 – Ken Adam, German-born British film set designer (d. 2016)
* February 13 – Louis Féraud, French fashion designer and artist (d. 1999)
* February 20 – Michael Ayrton, English sculptor, graphic artist and writer (d. 1975)
* February 22 – Cecil King, Irish abstract-minimalist painter (d. 1986)
* February 23 – John Latham, Zambian conceptual artist (d. 2006)
* March 2 – Ernst Haas, Austrian photographer (d. 1986)
* March 13 – Al Jaffee, American cartoonist (d. 2023)
* March 28 – Norman Bluhm, American painter (d. 1999)
* April 21 – Dimitrije Bašičević, Serbian painter and sculptor (d. 1987)
* April 23 – William Brice, American painter and teacher (d. 2008)
* April 25 – Karel Appel, Dutch painter, sculptor and poet (d. 2006)
* May 18 – Joan Eardley, British painter (d. 1963)
* May 29 – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (d. 1981)
* June 20 – Fiore de Henriquez, Italian-born British sculptor (d. 2004)

### July to December

* July 16
** Ernst Beyeler, Swiss art dealer and collector (d. 2010)
** Guy Laroche, French fashion designer (d. 1989)
* July 16 – Boscoe Holder, Trinidadian painter (d. 2007)
* July 17 – Richard Jeranian, Armenian painter, draftsman and lithographer (d. 2019)
* August 4 – Jean Pierre Capron, French painter (d. 1997)
* August 18 – Zdzisław Żygulski, Jr., Polish art historian (d. 2015)
* August 28 – Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, French photographer (d. 2004)
* September 22 – Will Elder, American illustrator and comic book artist (d. 2008)
* September 25 – Jacques Martin, French comics creator (d. 2010)
* September 27 – Jean-Pierre Sudre, French photographer (d. 1997)
* October 26 – Raymond Nasher, American art collector (d. 2007)
* November 12 – Gerson Leiber, American painter, lithographer and sculptor (d. 2018)
* November 17 – Albert Bertelsen, Danish artist (d. 2019)
* November 26 – Françoise Gilot, French watercolorist and ceramicist (d. 2023)

## Deaths

* January 18 – Adolf von Hildebrand, sculptor (born 1847)
* January 30 – John Francis Murphy, landscape painter (born 1853)
* February 2 – Antonio Jacobsen, Danish-American maritime artist (born 1850)
* February 3 – William Strang, painter and engraver (born 1859)
* February 4 – Eugène Burnand, Swiss painter (born 1850)
* February 11 – William Blake Richmond, English painter and designer (born 1842)
* February 21 – George Dunlop Leslie, English genre painter (born 1835)
* March 2 – Johann Friedrich Engel, German painter (born 1844)
* March 23 – Jean-Paul Laurens, painter and sculptor (born 1838)
* March 24 – Marcus Stone, painter and illustrator (born 1840)
* March 30 – Franz Benque, photographer (born 1841)
* April 6 – Vardges Sureniants, Armenian painter (born 1860)
* April 30 – Mabel Esplin, English stained-glass artist (born 1874)
* May 5 – William Friese-Greene, photographer and cinematographer (born 1855)
* May 29 – Abbott Handerson Thayer, painter (born 1849)
* June – Frank Enders, painter and etcher (born 1860)
* October 7 – John Thomson, photographer (born 1837)
* November 1 – Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, painter (born 1848)
* November 12 – Fernand Khnopff, Symbolist painter (born 1858)
* November 13 – William Robert Colton, sculptor (born 1867)