1952 in art

This is a list of events in art from the year 1952.

Events

• August 29 – Composer John Cage's 4′33″, during which the performer does not play, premieres in Maverick Concert Hall, Woodstock, New York.
• Eight younger British artists (Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull) are represented in the "New Aspects of British Sculpture" exhibition at the Venice Biennale which Herbert Read describes as the "Geometry of Fear". Britain also displays paintings by Graham Sutherland and Edward Wadsworth.
• Louis le Brocquy's 1951 painting A Family sparks controversy in Ireland when a group of art patrons offer to present it to the Dublin Municipal Gallery and it is rejected by the Art Advisory Committee on the grounds of incompetence.
• Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographic collection Images à la sauvette is published by Tériade in Paris.
• Publication of Un Art Autre, by Michel Tapié.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Mr Essington Lewis, CH
• Prix Puvis de Chavannes – Tristan Klingsor

Works

• Michael Andrews – A Man who Suddenly Fell Over
• Francis Bacon
• Figure in a landscape
• Study for Crouching Nude
• Salvador Dalí – Galatea of the Spheres
• Nicolas de Stael - Le Parc des Princes
• Dwight D. Eisenhower – Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
• M. C. Escher
• Gravitation
• Puddle
• Helen Frankenthaler – Mountains and Sea
• Lucian Freud – '
• Elisabeth Frink – Bird
• Willem de Kooning – Woman I
• Henri Laurens – ' (sculpture, University City of Caracas)
• René Magritte – The Listening Room
• Henri Matisse – cutouts
• series of Blue Nudes, e.g., ', Blue Nude II
• Black Leaf on Green Background
• La Négresse
• The Sorrows of the King
• John Minton – The Death of Nelson
• Henry Moore – King and Queen (bronze)
• Jackson Pollock – Blue Poles
• Germaine Richier - The Devil with Claws
• Kay Sage – On the Contrary
• David Smith – Agricola I (sculpture)
• Tom Stefopoulos - Lovejoy Columns in Portland, Oregon, pre-exiasiting structures painted by
• Dorothea Tanning – The Friend's Room