1938 in art

• January 2 – {{SS|Alba}} sinks off St Ives, Cornwall; the wreck is painted by local ex-fisherman naïve artist Alfred Wallis in several versions, [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wallis-wreck-of-the-alba-t06871 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.{{cite book|first=Francine|last=Prose|authorlink=Francine Prose|title=Peggy Guggenheim: the shock of the new|url=https://archive.org/details/peggyguggenheims0000pros|url-access=registration|location=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2015|isbn=978-0-300-20348-6}}
• Spring/Summer – Wyndham Lewis's Portrait of T. S. Eliot is submitted for exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London but rejected (as expected by the artist),{{cite news|last=Sherwin|first=Skye|date=2017-07-07|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/07/wyndham-lewis-ts-eliot-jigsaw-puzzle-rebellion-radicalism|title=Wyndham Lewis's TS Eliot: a jigsaw puzzle of rebellion and radicalism|newspaper=The Guardian|location=London|access-date=2023-07-03}}{{cite journal|last=Meyers|first=Jeffrey|year=1980|url=https://www.vqronline.org/essay/wyndham-lewis-and-ts-eliot-friendship|title=Wyndham Lewis and T.S. Eliot: A Friendship|journal=Virginia Quarterly Review|volume=56|issue=3|access-date=2023-07-03}} although Eliot himself approves of the painting and Augustus John resigns from the academy in reaction to its rejection.{{cite journal|last=Birchenough|first=Tom|year=2016|url=https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/2-2016-51/wyndham-lewis-portraits-friends-and-foes|title=Wyndham Lewis: Portraits of friends and foes|journal=The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine|volume=51|issue=2|access-date=2023-07-03}}
• 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.{{cite news|first=David|last=Aaronovitch|authorlink=David Aaronovitch|title=The treasure hunt that revealed Germany's 'degenerate' delights|newspaper=The Times Saturday Review|location=London|date=2018-06-09|pages=8–9}}
• 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.
• July 13 – Kröller-Müller Museum, designed by Henry van de Velde, opens in Otterlo, Netherlands.
• September – Piet Mondrian moves from Paris to London.{{cite news|first=Simon|last=Grant|title=Artist Piet Mondrian in London: the forgotten years|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/25/artist-piet-mondrian-london-years|date=2010-06-25|accessdate=2021-06-04|work=The Guardian|location=London}}
• 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.

• Archibald Prize: Nora Heysen – Mme Elink Schuurman

{{See also|Category:1938 sculptures}}

• Vilmos Aba-Novák – Fair in Transylvania
• Rita Angus – Head of a Maori Boy
• Thomas Hart Benton – Haystack
• Constantin Brâncuși – The Endless Column (sculpture)
• Javier Bueno – The Fighter of Madrid
• Marc Chagall – White Crucifixion
• William Coldstream – Bolton
• Salvador Dalí
• Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
• Impressions of Africa{{Cite web|url=https://www.dalipaintings.com/impressions-of-africa.jsp|title = Impressions of Africa, 1938 by Salvador Dali}}
• Rainy Taxi
• Charles Despiau – Assia (sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York)
• Arthur Dove – Swing Music
• M. C. Escher – Sky and Water II (lithograph)
• Leonor Fini
• Composition with Figures on a Terrace
• D'Un jour à l'autre (From One Day to Another, diptych)
• Jared French - Lunchtime with Early Miners (mural) in Plymouth, Pennsylvania{{cite web | url=https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2015/11/18/jared-french-lunchtime-with-early-miners-1938/jared-french-lunchtime-with-early-miners-1938-mural-in-the-plymouth-us-post-office-building-in-pennsylvania-new-deal-public-woks-of-art-project-copy-2/ | title=Jared French, "Lunchtime with Early Miners", 1938, Mural in the Plymouth US Post Office Building in Pennsylvania, New Deal Public Works of Art Project copy 2 | date=19 September 2021 }}
• Edward Hopper – [http://www.edwardhopper.net/compartment-c-car.jsp Compartment C, Car 293]
• Kurt Hutton – Funfair, Southend, Essex (photograph)
• Frida Kahlo
• [http://www.fridakahlo.org/four-inhabitants-of-mexico.jsp Four Inhabitants of Mexico City]
• Self-Portrait with Monkey
• The Suicide of Dorothy Hale
• What the Water Gave Me
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – Violet House in Front of a Snowy Mountain
• Paul Klee - Oriental Bliss{{cite web |url=https://www.louvreabudhabi.ae/en/Explore/highlights-of-the-collection/oriental%20bliss |title=Oriental Bliss, 1938 Paul Klee |website=Louvre Abu Dhabi}}
• L. S. Lowry – Family Group
• René Magritte – Time Transfixed
• Aristide Maillol – Air
• Ronald Moody – [https://web.archive.org/web/20160304072204/http://vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=72956&sos=0 Tacet] (carved wood head)
• Paul Nash
• Landscape from a Dream
• Nocturnal Landscape
• John Petts – Fishwife of Ynys Mon
• Pablo Picasso
• Femme au beret rouge-orange
• Maya with Doll
• Walter Sickert – Sir Thomas Beecham Conducting
• Steffen Thomas – Pioneer Women
• Rex Whistler – Capriccio (dining room mural at Plas Newydd in North Wales)
• Ignacio Zuloaga – The Alcázar in Flames (Heroic Landscape of Toledo)

• 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){{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/28/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries|title=Paul Neagu|date=28 June 2004|author=Anish Kapoor|website=The Guardian|access-date=3 December 2019}}
• 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 10 – Daidō Moriyama, Japanese photographer
• October 15 – Brice Marden, American painter
• October 20 – Iain Macmillan, Scottish photographer (d. 2006)
• November 2 – Richard Serra, American abstract sculptor (d. 2024)
• November 10 – Claude Serre, French cartoonist (d. 1998)
• December 25 – Duane Armstrong, American painter
• date unknown
• John Behan, Irish sculptor
• Rotraut Klein-Moquay, German-French visual artist
• 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 5 – Mikuláš Galanda, Slovak modernist painter and illustrator (b. 1895)
• June 15 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German Expressionist painter (b. 1880; suicide)
• June 19 – María Obligado de Soto y Calvo, Argentinian painter (b. 1857)
• 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)
• December 4 – Gonzalo Bilbao, Spanish painter (b. 1860){{cite book|author=Bernardino de Pantorba|title=Picture Galleries in Madrid: A Critical and Historical Study|publisher=Editorial Mayfe|year=1961|page=1}}
• Antonio Fabrés, Catalan painter (b. 1854)

• 1938 in fine arts of the Soviet Union

{{reflist}}

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Category:Years of the 20th century in art

Category:1930s in art