1932 in art

Events

• August 2 – The Saint Petersburg Union of Artists is established (as the "Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists").
• Alvar Aalto designs a new form of laminated bent-plywood furniture.
• Courtauld Institute of Art is founded in London.
• The Wedgwood pottery firm commissions its first designs from Keith Murray.
• First Abstraction-Création Cahier, Abstraction-création: Art non-figuratif, is produced.

Works

Graphic art

• Frank Brangwyn – British Empire Panels
• Edward Hopper
  • Room in Brooklyn
  • Room in New York
• Lois Mailou Jones – The Ascent of Ethiopia
• Frieda Kahlo
  • Henry Ford Hospital
  • My Birth
  • Self Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States
• Harold Knight
  • Girl Reading
  • Girl Writing
• René Magritte – The Universe Unmasked
• Rolf Nesch – Elbe Bridge I
• Pablo Picasso
  • Girl Before a Mirror (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
  • La Lecture
  • Nude in a Black Armchair
  • Nude, Green Leaves and Bust
  • Le Rêve
• Charles Sheeler
  • River Rouge Plant
  • Interior with Stove (conté crayon)
• Amrita Sher-Gil – Young Girls
• Walter Sickert – Miss Earhart's Arrival (Tate Gallery, London)
• Xul Solar – Palacio Almi
• Stanley Spencer completes his series of paintings at Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere

Photographs

• Henri Cartier-Bresson – Derrière la gare de Saint-Lazare
• Charles Clyde Ebbets – Lunch atop a Skyscraper
• John Heartfield – photomontages
  • Adolf, the Superman
  • The Meaning of Geneva, Where Capital Lives, There Can Be No Peace

Sculptures

• American Doughboy Bringing Home Victory, Seattle
• Group of Bears
• Alberto Giacometti – Woman with her Throat Cut
• Käthe Kollwitz – The Grieving Parents
• Gaston Lachaise – Standing Woman
• Leo Lentelli – The James Cardinal Gibbons Memorial Statue
• Paul Manship – Abraham Lincoln: The Hoosier Youth
• Henry Moore – Half-figure
• Felix Nylund – Three Smiths Statue (Helsinki)
• Rodgers and Poor – Kill Devil Hill Monument

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Ernest Buckmaster – Sir William Irvine

Births

• February 9 – Gerhard Richter, German painter
• March 14 – Norval Morrisseau, Aboriginal Canadian artist (d. 2007)
• April 10 – James Lee Byars, American artist (d. 1997)
• April 19 – Fernando Botero, Colombian painter and sculptor
• May 3 – Walter Hopps, American museum director and curator (d. 2005)
• May 4 – Ivor Wood, English stop-motion animator (d. 2004)
• May 14 – Yuri Khukhrov, Russian painter (d. 2003)
• June 5 – Christy Brown, Irish author, painter and poet (d. 1981)
• June 25 – Peter Blake, English pop artist
• July 20 – Nam June Paik, South Korean-born American video artist (d. 2006)
• August 6 – Howard Hodgkin, English painter
• August 19 – Jacques Lob, French comic book creator (d. 1990)
• August 23 – Valentina Monakhova, Russian painter and graphic artist
• October 4 – Terence Conran, English designer
• October 14 – Wolf Vostell, German artist
• October 22 – Afewerk Tekle, Ethiopian painter and stained glass artist (d. 2012)
• October 29 – R. B. Kitaj, American-born English artist (d. 2007)
• December 7 – Paul Caponigro, American photographer
• December 16 – Quentin Blake, English illustrator
• date unknown – Basil Blackshaw, Northern Irish painter

Deaths

• January 15 – John Henry Dearle, English textile designer (b. 1859)
• February 6 – Hermann Ottomar Herzog, German American landscape painter (b. 1832)
• February 11 – Robert Gibb, Scottish painter (b. 1845)
• March – Elizabeth Taylor, American traveller and artist (b. 1856)
• March 5 – Johan Thorn Prikker, Dutch art nouveau painter and stained-glass artist (b. 1868)
• March 11 – Dora Carrington, English Bloomsbury Group painter and designer (b. 1893)
• March 21 – Georg Dehio, Baltic German art historian (b. 1850)
• March 23 – Boris Schatz, Lithuanian Jewish sculptor (b. 1866)
• April 2 – Ella Gaunt Smith, American doll-maker (b. 1868)
• June 6 – Alois Dryák, Czech architect and designer (b. 1872)
• July 14 – Dimitrie Paciurea, Romanian sculptor (b. 1873 or 1875)
• July 19 – Louis Maurer, German American lithographer (b. 1832)
• July 21 – Samuel P. Dinsmoor, American sculptor (b. 1843)
• August 4 – Alfred Henry Maurer, American modernist painter, son of Louis (suicide; b. 1868)
• September 20 – Max Slevogt, German artist (b. 1868)
• September 23 – Jules Chéret, French painter and lithographer (b. 1836)
• September 28 – Emil Orlík, Austro-Hungarian etcher and lithographer (b. 1870)
• October 1 – W. G. Collingwood, English painter and author (b. 1854)
• October 2 – Carl Seffner, German portrait sculptor (b. 1861)
• October 17 – Lucy Bacon, American Impressionist painter (b. 1857)
• October 23 – Daniel Hernández Morillo, Peruvian painter (b. 1856)
• November 30 – Gari Melchers, American naturalist painter (b. 1860)
• December 8 – Gertrude Jekyll, English garden designer (b. 1843)
• December 9 – Karl Blossfeldt, German photographer and sculptor (b. 1865)

See also

• 1932 in fine arts of the Soviet Union