1957 in art

Events from the year 1957 in art.

• April 19 – Picasso is introduced by American photographer David Douglas Duncan to his dachshund Lump who becomes Picasso's companion and subject in paintings.^[1]
• May 17 – First known instance of a chimpanzee (Congo) painting.^[2] His mentor Desmond Morris organises an exhibition of chimpanzee art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
• Hungarian National Gallery opens in Buda Castle, Budapest.
• Gruppe SPUR, an artistic collaboration, is founded in Germany.
• Chicago's Lithuanian community opens the Čiurlionis Art Gallery.
• John Lennon enrols at Liverpool College of Art where he will meet Stuart Sutcliffe.
• Man Ray's Object to Be Destroyed (1923) is destroyed
• Three new neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces are released: Folio (designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum), Neue Haas Grotesk (designed by Max Miedinger) and Univers (designed by Adrian Frutiger); all will be influential in the International Typographic Style of graphic design.

• Archibald Prize: Ivor Hele – Self Portrait
• John Moores Painting Prize: Jack Smith – Creation and Crucifixion^[3]

• January – Yves Klein – Proposte Monochrome, Epoca Blu ("Proposition Monochrome; Blue Epoch"), Gallery Apollinaire, Milan.

• Arman - Mauve Administratif
• Jean Arp – Evocation of a Form: Human, Lunar, Spectral (cast bronze)
• Maurice Boitel – The Hens
• Paul-Émile Borduas – Étoile noire
• Arthur Boyd – Dreaming Bridegroom 1
• Yves Klein – Aerostatic Sculpture (Paris).
• L. S. Lowry – Man Lying on a Wall; Portrait of Ann
• Isamu Noguchi – Endless Coupling
• Pablo Picasso – Las Meninas
• Charles Sheeler – Red Against White
• Clyfford Still – 1957-D No. 1

• January 27 – Frank Miller, American comic-book artist
• April 3 – Yves Chaland, French cartoonist (d. 1990)
• May 4 – John Akomfrah, Ghanaian-born British filmmaker
• July 31 – Martin Jennings, English figurative sculpture
• August 7 – Mark Bagley, American comic-book artist
• August 9 – Rick Leonardi, American comic-book illustrator
• August 28 – Ai Weiwei, Chinese installation artist
• October 16 – Jim Hodges, American installation artist
• November 18 – Ernst Billgren, Swedish sculptor
• November 26 – Félix González-Torres, Cuban artist (d. 1996)
• undated
  • Bill Barker, American Schwa conceptual artist
  • Mike Bernard, English painter and multi-media artist
  • Wang Jiujiang, Chinese neo-shan shui artist

• January 1 – Óscar Domínguez, Spanish painter (b. 1906)
• January 13? – Saishū Onoe, Japanese poet and calligrapher (b. 1876)
• January 17 – Jože Plečnik, Slovene architect (b. 1872)
• January 20 – John Minton, English painter and illustrator (suicide) (b. 1917)
• February 4 – Miguel Covarrubias, Mexican painter and caricaturist (b. 1904)
• February 11 – Gwen Raverat, English wood engraver (b. 1885)
• February 14 – Emanuel Hahn, German Canadian sculptor (b. 1881)
• March 16 – Constantin Brâncuși, Romanian-born sculptor (b. 1876)
• March 28 – Jack Butler Yeats, Irish painter and illustrator (b. 1871)
• March 23 – Andrzej Wróblewski, Polish figurative painter (mountaineering accident) (b. 1927)
• May 14 – Marie Vassilieff, Russian-born painter (b. 1884)^[4]
• May 18 – Bruce Rogers, American book designer and typographer (b. 1870)
• June 12 – Mario Urteaga Alvarado, Peruvian painter (b. 1875)
• July 7 – Kiyoshi Koishi, Japanese photographer (b. 1908)
• August 2 – Lasar Segall, Lithuanian-born Brazilian Jewish painter (b. 1891)
• August 15 – C. T. Loo, Chinese-born art dealer (b. 1880)
• August 19 – David Bomberg, English painter (b. 1890)
• September 13 – Adam Emory Albright, American painter of figures in landscapes (b. 1862)
• September 26 – Pompeo Coppini, Italian American sculptor (b. 1870)
• October 11 – René Auberjonois, Swiss Post-Impressionist painter (b. 1872)
• October 15 – Henry van de Velde, Belgian-born painter, architect and designer, a founder of the Art Nouveau movement (b. 1863)
• October 24 – Christian Dior, French fashion designer (b. 1905)
• November 2 – Mahonri Young, American sculptor (d. 1877)
• November 20 – Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Russian-born graphic artist (b. 1875)
• November 24 – Diego Rivera, Mexican painter (b. 1886)
• November 30 – Paja Jovanović, a leading Serbian Realist painter (along with Đorđe Krstić and Uroš Predić) (b. 1859)
• December 14 – Josef Lada, Czech illustrator and painter (b. 1887)
• December 15 – Heinrich Hoffmann, German propaganda photographer (b. 1885)

• 1957 in Fine Arts of the Soviet Union