1955 in art

Events from the year 1955 in art.

Events

• January 21 – O. Winston Link starts a 5-year personal project to document steam operations on the Norfolk and Western Railway in the United States using flash photography.
• January 26 – A trial establishes that the recently "restored" "medieval" frescoes in St. Mary's Church, Lübeck, are in fact newly painted by Lothar Malskat and an associate.
• March – A Photographer's Gallery is established in New York City by Roy DeCarava.
• May 17 – The Clark Art Institute opens to the public in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
• June 1 – Première of Billy Wilder's film of The Seven Year Itch featuring an iconic scene of Marilyn Monroe standing on a New York City Subway grating as her white dress (created by Travilla) is blown above her knees.
• June 27 – Sir Jacob Epstein marries Kathleen Garman.
• October–November – Nikolaus Pevsner delivers this year's series of Reith Lectures on The Englishness of English Art, originally broadcast on BBC radio in the UK.
• December – Iris Clert Gallery opens in the , Paris, and its owner, Iris Clert, first meets Yves Klein.
• date unknown
• Marcel Duchamp becomes a citizen of the United States.
• Pablo Picasso finishes painting his Les Femmes d'Alger ("The Women of Algiers") series (inspired by Delacroix), concluding with "" which in 2015 will sell at a world record price for a painting at auction.
• British studio potter Alan Caiger-Smith establishes Aldermaston Pottery in England.
• Enrique Tábara obtains an Ecuadorian government scholarship to study in Spain.
• Andy Warhol begins designing advertisements for New York shoe manufacturer Israel Miller.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Ivor Hele – Robert Campbell Esq.

Works

• Michael Andrews – Four People Sunbathing (Arts Council England)
• Pietro Annigoni – Portrait of Elizabeth II
• Balthus
• Girls on the Couch
• Nude Before a Mirror
• John Brack
• Collins St., 5 pm
• The Car
• Edward Burra – Izzy Orts
• Lucien Clergue – Trio des Saltimbanques (photograph)
• Carroll Cloar – My Father Was Big as a Tree
• Pompeo Coppini – Statue of George Washington (bronze, University of Texas at Austin)
• Salvador Dalí – The Sacrament of the Last Supper (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) (completed)
• Ben Enwonwu – Anyanwu (sculpture)
• Sir Jacob Epstein – ' (sculpture for Llandaff Cathedral)
• M. C. Escher – lithographs
• Compass Rose (Order and Chaos II)
• Convex and Concave
• Three Worlds
• Alberto Giacometti
• Diego (approximate date)
• Grande tête mince
• Oswaldo Guayasamín – El ataúd blanco
• Edward Hopper – South Carolina Morning
• Jasper Johns
• Flag
• White Flag
• Willem de Kooning
• Composition
• Woman as Landscape
• Woman-Ochre
• Lee Krasner
• Bald Eagle
• Color Totem
• Norman Lewis – Harlem Turns White
• L. S. Lowry (Tate collection)
• Industrial Landscape
• A Young Man
• René Magritte – The Mysteries of the Horizon
• Georg Mayer-Marton — Crucifixion (mosaic and fresco in Roman Catholic Church of Holy Rosary in Fitton Hill, Oldham, England)
• Henry Moore
• '
• ' (carved brick, Bouwcentrum, Rotterdam)
• Sidney Nolan – Ned Kelly
• Pablo Picasso – Don Quixote (sketch for Les Lettres Françaises, August)
• Robert Rauschenberg – Bantam
• Norman Rockwell – Marriage License
• Mark Rothko – Violet Center
• Charles Sheeler – The Web
• Hedda Sterne – New York, N.Y., 1955