1938 in art

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The year 1938 in art involved some significant events and new works.

Events

January 2 – SS Alba sinks off St Ives, Cornwall; the wreck is painted by local ex-fisherman naïve artist Alfred Wallis in several versions, one of which will subsequently be displayed in Tate St Ives, metres from the wreck.
January 16 – International Exposition of Surrealism opens at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
January 24 – Peggy Guggenheim opens her Guggenheim Jeune gallery at 30 Cork Street in London with a display of work by Jean Cocteau, followed in February by the first showing of Wassily Kandinsky's work in Britain.^[1]
July 8 – Exhibition of twentieth century German art opens in London at the New Burlington Galleries, challenging the Nazi view of "degenerate art" in its home country.^[2]
July 10 – Second Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung ("Great German Art Exhibition") opened by Adolf Hitler in the Haus der deutschen Kunst ("House of German Art") in Munich; Hitler attacks the contemporary London exhibition.^[2]
July 13 – Kröller-Müller Museum, designed by Henry van de Velde, opens in Otterlo, Netherlands.
December 5–17 – Albert Namatjira exhibition in Melbourne includes over 2,000 works, the first solo display of indigenous Australian art.
American art collector Louis J. Caldor 'discovers' the naïve paintings of Grandma Moses.

January 2
- David Bailey, English photographer
- Robert Smithson, American artist (d. 1973)
January 7 – Roland Topor, French illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker (d. 1997)
February 13 – Joan Brown, American figurative painter (d. 1990)
February 22 – Paul Neagu, Romanian-born artist (d. 2004)^[3]
March 6 – Pauline Boty, English pop art painter (d. 1966)
March 15 – Dick Higgins, English composer, poet, printer and early Fluxus artist (d. 1998)
April 20 – Andrew Vicari, Welsh-born portrait painter (d. 2016)
May 12 – Paul Huxley, English painter and academic
May 18 – Janet Fish, American Realist painter
May 20 – Astrid Kirchherr, German photographer (d. 2020)
July 24 – Eugene J. Martin, American visual artist (d. 2005)
July 28 – Robert Hughes, Australian-born art critic (d. 2012)
July 30 – Terry O'Neill, British photographer (d. 2019)
August 19 – Robert Graham, Mexican-American sculptor (d. 2008)
August 29 – Hermann Nitsch, Austrian performance artist
September 1 – Per Kirkeby, Danish artist (d. 2018)
September 25 – Bill Owens, American photographer
September 27 – Günter Brus, Austrian performance artist
October 15 – Brice Marden, American painter
October 20 – Iain Macmillan, Scottish photographer (d. 2006)
November 2 – Richard Serra, artist and sculptor
November 10 – Claude Serre, French cartoonist (d. 1998)
December 25 – Duane Armstrong, American painter
date unknown
- John Behan, Irish sculptor
- Takeshi Mizukoshi, Japanese landscape photographer

January 1 – Alice Bailly, Swiss painter and multimedia artist (b. 1872)
January 19 – Rosa Mayreder, Austrian freethinker, author, painter, musician and feminist (b. 1858)
February 3 – Niels Skovgaard, Danish sculptor and painter (b. 1858)
February 28 – C. E. Brock, English painter and illustrator (b. 1870)
April 7 – Suzanne Valadon, French artists' model and painter, mother of Utrillo (b. 1865)
April 24 – John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, Canadian historical portrait painter (b. 1850)
May 22 – William Glackens, American realist painter (b. 1870)
June 15 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German Expressionist painter (b. 1880; suicide)
June 24 – C. Yarnall Abbott, American photographer and painter (b. 1870)
September 6 – Mary Seton Watts, British symbolist craftswoman and designer (b. 1849)
October 24 – Ernst Barlach, German Expressionist sculptor (b. 1870)
Antonio Fabrés, Catalan painter (b. 1854)

^ Prose, Francine (2015). Peggy Guggenheim: the shock of the new. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20348-6.
^ ^a ^b Aaronovitch, David (2018-06-09). "The treasure hunt that revealed Germany's 'degenerate' delights". The Times Saturday Review. London. pp. 8–9.
^ Anish Kapoor (28 June 2004). "Paul Neagu". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2019.