1969 in art

Events from the year 1969 in art.

Events

• January 9 – In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution displays the art of Winslow Homer for 6 weeks.
• February 2 – Ten paintings are defaced in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• August 8 – Iain Macmillan photographs the cover picture for The Beatles' album Abbey Road in London.
• October 5 – Monty Python's Flying Circus is broadcast for the first time on BBC Television, with Terry Gilliam's animations.
• October 18 – Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (c.1609) is stolen from its frame in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Sicily; it has not been recovered as of 2020.
• November 19 – The Apollo 12 lunar module lands on the Moon with astronaut and artist Alan Bean; American artist Forrest "Frosty" Myers claims to have smuggled the art piece Moon Museum onto a leg of the module which will remain on the surface.
• December 19 - The exhibition Alvin Loving: Psintings opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City marking the frst solo exhibition given to a black artist in the institution's history.
• c. December – The music and performance art collective COUM Transmissions is formed in England by Genesis P-Orridge.
• Late – Andy Warhol, John Wilcock, and Gerard Malanga co-found the magazine Interview.
• Opening of the Oakland Museum of California, designed by Kevin Roche.
• Lyrical Abstraction exhibition debuts at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum marking a significant return to expressivity in American abstract painting. For two years the exhibition travels throughout the U.S. including to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Ray Crooke – George Johnston
• John Moores Painting Prize - Richard Hamilton and Mary Martin for "Toaster" and "Cross" (respectively)

Works

• Kenojuak Ashevak – The Owl
• Michael Ayrton – The Arkville Minotaur
• Francis Bacon – Three Studies of Lucian Freud
• Thomas Bass – Australian Seal (bronze, Washington, D.C.)
• Edward Bawden – Victoria tile motif on London Underground's Victoria line
• Fernando Botero - Protestant Family
• Alexander Calder – La Grande Vitesse (sculpture)
• Christo and Jeanne Claude - "Wrapped Coast" in Little Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• Mai Dantsig – Partisan Ballad
• Helen Frankenthaler – Slice of Stone Itself
• Frank Frazetta – Egyptian Queen
• Milton Glaser - Speed City
• Anna Hyatt Huntington - Equestrian statue of Israel Putnam at Putnam Memorial State Park in Redding, Connecticut (dedicated)
• Allen Jones – Hatstand, Table and Chair (sculptures)
• Ronnie Landfield – Diamond Lake
• André Lufwa - "Batteur de tam-tam"
• Joan Mitchell - Sans Neige
• Kanda Nissho – Snow Farm
• Pablo Picasso- The Kiss
• Enzo Plazzotta – Baigneuse
• Jean-Paul Riopelle – La Joute (public sculptural installation, Montreal)
• Will Roberts – Redberth Village, Pembrokeshire
• Alexander Semionov – Leningrad in the Morning
• Victor Teterin – Sredne-Podjacheskaya Street in Leningrad
• Nikolai Timkov – Russian Winter
• Hans Unger – Oxford Circus and Green Park tile motifs on London Underground's Victoria line

Exhibitions

• December 30 until March 1, 1970 - Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (Dan Flavin, Larry Bell, Robert Morris, Franz Erhard Walther, and Pulsa).

Births

• January 5 – Marilyn Manson, American rock musician and painter
• February 7 – Andrew Micallef, Maltese painter and musician
• July 11 – Abigail McLellan, British painter (d. 2009)
• October 5 – Chantal Joffe, English painter
• November 26 – Kara Walker, African American artist
• date unknown
  • Boushra Almutawakel, Yemeni photographer
  • Steven Claydon, English sculptor, installation artist and musician
  • Invader, French urban artist
  • Patricia Martín, Mexican curator

Deaths

• January 20 – Luigi Del Bianco, Italian-born American sculptor (b. 1892)
• January 29 – Edward Marshall Boehm, American Expressionist sculptor (b. 1913)
• March 14 – Ben Shahn, Lithuanian-born American painter and photographer (b. 1898)
• March 17 – Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Spanish painter (b. 1882)
• May 11 – T. K. Padmini, Keralan feminist painter (b. 1940; d. in childbirth)
• June 12 – Aleksandr Deyneka, Russian painter and sculptor (b. 1899)
• July 5 – Walter Gropius, German-born architect (b. 1883)
• July 9 – Emerik Feješ, Hungarian and Serbian painter (b. 1904)
• July 25 – Otto Dix, German painter and printmaker (b. 1891)
• August – Doris Brabham Hatt, English modernist painter (b. 1890)
• September 15 – Edith Barry, American sculptor, painter, illustrator and designer (b. 1883)
• November 21 – Norman Lindsay, Australian sculptor and cartoonist (born 1879)

See also

• 1969 in fine arts of the Soviet Union