1941 in art

Events from the year 1941 in art.

• March 17 – In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• July 14 – American art collector Peggy Guggenheim and German painter Max Ernst arrive in New York City, fleeing occupied Europe.
• August 12 – The first evacuated paintings from the National Gallery in London are moved to underground storage at a slate quarry beneath Manod Mawr in North Wales.^[1]
• October 24 – English artist Brian Stonehouse is captured as a Special Operations Executive agent in France.^[2]
• October 31 – Work ceases on sculpting Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the United States, continued by Lincoln Borglum after the death in March of his father Gutzon Borglum.
• December 8 – The exhibition American Negro Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries opens in Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery in New York City.
• December 30 – Peggy Guggenheim marries the exiled Max Ernst in Virginia.
• Ettore DeGrazia's work appears for the first time in Arizona Highways magazine.
• African-American painter Jacob Lawrence completes his Migration Series.
• German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, in hiding in the south of France, begins the autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel ("Life? or Theater?: A Song-play").
• Indiana University Art Museum established in Bloomington.
• The Art Center in La Jolla established in California.

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Sir James Elder, KBE

• Ansel Adams – Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (photograph)
• Ethel V. Ashton – Defenders of the Wyoming Country 1778 (United States post office mural, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania)
• Max Beckmann – Double Portrait, Max Beckmann and Quappi
• Peter Belov – 1941 ("Large Stalin and Red Army")
• Paul Cadmus – Aviator
• Paul Delvaux
  • The Anxious City
  • The Phases of the Moon
• A. E. Doyle and Associates – Loyal B. Stearns Memorial Fountain (Portland, Oregon)
• Sir Russell Drysdale – Moody's pub
• Jacob Epstein – Jacob and the Angel (alabaster sculpture, 1940–1)
• Ivon Hitchens
  • Damp Autumn
  • Interior, Boy in Bed
• Edward Hopper – Girlie Show
• Marcel Jean – Armoire Surréaliste^[3][4]
• Yousuf Karsh – The Roaring Lion (photographic portrait of Winston Churchill)
• Dame Laura Knight – In For Repairs
• Alonzo Victor Lewis – Dr. Mark A. Matthews (bronze bust, Denny Park (Seattle))
• Musa McKim – Wildlife in White Mountain and Philip Guston – Pulp Wood Logging (murals at Federal Building (Laconia, New Hampshire))
• Roberto Matta
  • Composition Abstraite
  • Ecouter Vivre
  • Foeu
  • The Initiation (Origine d’un Extrême)
  • Invasion of the Night
  • Théorie de l’Arbre
• Paul Nash
  • Battle of Britain
  • Totes Meer
• John Petts – Alun Lewis
• Pablo Picasso
  • Dora Maar au Chat
  • Tete de femme (Dora Maar) (sculpture)
• Horace Pippin – Self-portrait
• Albin Polasek – Masaryk Memorial, Chicago
• Victor Vasarely – Untitled
• Carel Weight
  • Escape of the Zebra from the Zoo during an Air Raid
  • It happened to us – daylight raid

• April 13 – Jean-Marc Reiser, French comics artist (d. 1983)
• May 23 – Martin Puryear, American sculptor
• June 7 – Tony Ray-Jones, English photographer (d. 1972)
• July 12 – Richard Tuttle, American postminimalist sculptor, painter and installation artist
• July 22 – Vaughn Bodē, American underground comix, graphic design and graffiti artist (d. 1975)
• August 29 – Ugo Nespolo, Italian painter and filmmaker
• September 20 – Dale Chihuly, American glass sculptor.^[5]
• September 24 – Linda McCartney, née Eastman, American music photographer (d. 1998)
• December 6 – Bruce Nauman, American installation and video artist
• December 31 – Robert Lenkiewicz, English painter (d. 2002)
• date unknown
  • Mary Kelly, American conceptual artist
  • James Coleman, Irish installation and video artist
  • Don Perlis, American realist painter
  • Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq, Canadian Inuk artist

• January 10 – John Lavery, Irish painter and war artist (b. 1856)^[6]
• February 6 – Maximilien Luce, French painter (b. 1858)
• March 6 – Gutzon Borglum, American sculptor (b. 1867)
• March 30 – Bertha Jaques, American etcher (b. 1863)
• April 14 – Guillermo Kahlo, German-Mexican photographer (b. 1871)
• April 16 – Émile Bernard, French Post-Impressionist painter (b. 1868)
• October 25 – Robert Delaunay, French painter (b. 1885)
• November 7 – Frank Pick, English transport administrator and patron of art and design (b. 1878)
• December 3 – Pavel Filonov, Russian painter and poet (b. 1883)
• December 5 – Amrita Sher-Gil, Indian painter (b. 1913)
• December 30 – El Lissitzky, Russian designer, architect and photographer (b. 1890)
• date unknown – William Jacob Baer, American miniature painter (b. 1860)

• 1941 in fine arts of the Soviet Union