# 1940 in art

Events from the year 1940 in art.

## Events

* February – The series of 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' propaganda posters by 'Fougasse' is published by the Ministry of Information (United Kingdom).
* March – The Tartu Art Museum is officially established in Tartu, Estonia; its first exhibition is opened in November 1940.
* July – The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) of the Nazi Party begins its task of appropriating cultural property from occupied territories, initially in France.
* October – Grandma Moses' second solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted", opens at Otto Kallir's Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York City.
* November 3 – The War Artists' Advisory Committee of the U.K. Ministry of Information opens its first exhibition of War Pictures by British Artists to the public at the otherwise-evacuated National Gallery in London.
* November 13 – Release of Walt Disney's animated movie Fantasia in the United States.
* December 8 – Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera remarry in San Francisco (U.S.)
* Cecil Beaton is among the photographers commissioned by the U.K. Ministry of Information to undertake war photography.
* Xawery Dunikowski is deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he survives until 1945.
* Jacques Lipchitz flees France for the United States.
* Henry Moore is commissioned as a war artist and produces drawings of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from The Blitz.
* Anthony Blunt's Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600 is published. This year he is recruited to work for MI5 while simultaneously spying for the NKVD.

## Awards

* Archibald Prize: Max Meldrum – Dr J Forbes McKenzie

## Works
### Paintings

* Vanessa Bell – Leonard Woolf
* Pierre Bonnard – Oranges et Kakis (c.)
* Clive Branson – Noreen and Rosa
* Howard Chandler Christy – Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States
* Charles Cundall – The Withdrawal from Dunkirk, June 1940
* Salvador Dalí
** The Face of War
** Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire
* 'Fougasse' – Careless Talk Costs Lives (propaganda posters)
* Jared French – Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler (series of nude portraits)
* Jesús Guerrero Galván – Head of a Woman
* Edward Hopper
** Gas
** Office at Night
* Frida Kahlo
** The Dream
** Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser
** Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair
** Self-Portrait with Monkey
** Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
** The Wounded Table
* Raymond McGrath – Training Aircraft Under Construction
* Conroy Maddox – The Strange Country
* Henri Matisse
** La Blouse Roumaine
** Le Rêve de 1940
* Roberto Matta – Dark Light
* John Piper
** Interior of Coventry Cathedral, November 15th, 1940
** The Passage to the Control-room at South West Regional Headquarters, Bristol
** St Mary le Port, Bristol
* Candido Portinari – Seascape
* Eric Ravilious – Watercolours
** A Warship in Dock
** Submarines in Dry Dock
** Ship's Screw on a Railway Truck
** Midnight Sun
* Charles Sheeler
** Bucks County Barn
** Fugue
** Interior
* Situ Qiao – Put Down Your Whip
* Graham Sutherland
** Black Landscape
** Devastation, 1940: A House on the Welsh Border
* Hugh J. Ward – Portrait of Superman (Lehman College)
* Carel Willink – Wilma with Cat
* Grant Wood – Sentimental Ballad

### Photographs

* Herbert Mason – St Paul's Survives
* Nickolas Muray – Soldiers of the Sky

### Sculptures

* Eric Aumonier – The Archer (East Finchley tube station, London Passenger Transport Board)
* Carl Milles – The Wedding of the Waters (fountain, St. Louis, Missouri)
* Isamu Noguchi – News (stainless steel bas-relief, Rockefeller Center, New York)
* Attilio Piccirilli – Guglielmo Marconi (bronze, Washington, D.C.)
* José Ângelo Cottinelli Telmo (architect) and Leopoldo de Almeida (sculptor) – Padrão dos Descobrimentos (temporary version)

## Exhibitions

* Saved from Europe at Galerie St. Etienne in New York City

## Births

* January – Anthony d'Offay, British art dealer
* January 2 – Peter Young, American painter
* January 6 – John Byrne, Scottish painter and writer
* January 24
** Vito Acconci, American conceptual artist, installation artist, performance artist and filmmaker (d. 2017)
** Mel Bochner, American conceptual artist
* February 22 – Billy Name, born William Linich Jr., American photographer, collaborator with Andy Warhol
* March 7 – Hannah Wilke, American painter, sculptor and photographer (d. 1993)
* March 20 – Mary Ellen Mark, American photographer (d. 2015)
* April 11 – Marcia Tucker, American museum curator (d. 2006)
* April 16 – Joan Snyder, American painter
* April 30 – Burt Young, born Gerald DeLouise, American actor, painter and author
* May 1 – Elsa Peretti, Italian jewelry designer (d. 2021)
* May 11 – Juan Downey, Chilean-American video artist (d. 1993)
* May 25 – Nobuyoshi Araki, Japanese photographer
* June 17 – Alton Kelley, American poster and album artist (d. 2008)
* July 5 – Chuck Close, American "photorealistic" painter (d. 2021)
* July 27 – Pina Bausch, German neo-expressionist choreographer and dancer (d. 2009)
* August 23 – Galen Rowell, American wilderness photographer (d. 2002)
* September 6 – Elizabeth Murray, American painter, printmaker and draughtsman (d. 2007)
* September 10 – David Mann, American painter
* September 26 – Arno Rink, German painter and professor
* September 27 – Rudolph Moshammer, German fashion designer (d. 2005)
* October 22 – Ashley Jackson, Malaysian-born Yorkshire landscape watercolourist
* date unknown
** Germano Celant, Italian art critic, curator and historian (d. 2020)
** Stevan Knežević, Serbian painter, sculptor and professor of art (d. 1995)
** Anthony McCall, British-born American avant-garde installation artist, projected film
** Dušan Otašević, Serbian painter and sculptor
** Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Native American painter and printmaker

## Deaths

* January 18 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian American landscape painter (b. 1880)
* February 11 – Ellen Day Hale, American painter and printmaker (b. 1855)
* February 27 – Nicolae Tonitza, Romanian painter and etcher (b. 1886)
* March 16 – Iso Rae, Australian Impressionist painter (b. 1860)
* April 15 – Alexandru Plămădeală, Moldovan sculptor (b. 1888)
* May 13 - Henry Charles Fehr, British sculptor (b. 1867)
* June 21 – Édouard Vuillard, French painter (b. 1868)
* June 29 – Paul Klee, Swiss painter expressionism, cubism, and surrealism (b. 1879)
* July 4 – Józef Pankiewicz, Polish painter, graphic artist and teacher (b. 1866)
* July 28 – Gerda Wegener, Danish artist (b. 1886)
* July 31 – Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, German avant-garde painter, by involuntary euthanasia (b. 1899)
* August 22 – Paul Gösch, German artist and architect (b. 1885)
* September 5 – Frances Darlington, English relief sculpture (b. 1880)
* September 15 – Dick Ket, Dutch painter (b. 1902)
* September 27 – Walter Benjamin, German philosopher, "comparatist" and art critic (b. 1892)
* October 15 – Karl Uchermann, Norwegian canine painter (b. 1855)
* November 16 – Colin Gill, English war artist, muralist and portrait painter (b. 1892).
* November 17 – Eric Gill, English sculptor and engraver (b. 1882)
* date unknown – Francesco Stella, Italian painter and set designer (b. 1862)