Events

January 18 – French jazz musician Charles Delaunay is born in Paris, the son of artists Sonia and Robert Delaunay. Sonia makes a patchwork quilt for his crib which is influential in the development of Orphism.^[1]
February 2 – First issue of Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion.
May – Only exhibition by The London Secession group of photographers, at the Newman Gallery.
June 10 – Rembrandt House Museum opened in Amsterdam.
August 21 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris by Vincenzo Peruggia; the theft is discovered the following day when painter Louis Béroud arrives to sketch it but the painting is not located until December 1913. Poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire and his friend Pablo Picasso are questioned over the theft.
Creation of Der Blaue Reiter Group (first exhibition opens December 18 in Munich).
Creation of the Puteaux Group.
Creation of the Camden Town Group.
Wassily Kandinsky publishes Über das Geistige in der Kunst, Insbesondere in der Malerei ("Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and Painting in Particular" or "The Art of Spiritual Harmony"), dated 1912.
Rayonism developed in Russia by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.
English wood engraver Gwen Darwin marries French painter Jacques Raverat.

Exhibitions

April 21–June 13 – Salon des Indépendants; Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Joseph Csaky and Roger de La Fresnaye are shown together in Room 41, provoking an 'involuntary scandal' out of which Cubism emerges and spreads in Paris. The term "Cubism" is first used in English.
May 11 – A Futurist exhibition in Milan is the first of efforts by the group to make its theories concrete.
May 20–July 2 – Second International Art Exhibition in Düsseldorf (Kunsthalle), organised by Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler
October 1–November 8 – Salon d'Automne; At this exhibition, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger, František Kupka, André Lhote, Roger de La Fresnaye, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Csaky exhibit Cubist works; and André Mare designs the decorative arts section.
One-man show by Eugeniusz Żak at Galerie Druet.

January 2 – Alexander Džigurski, Serbian seascape artist (d. 1995).
January 17 – Izis Bidermanas, Lithuanian-born photographer (d. 1980).
January 31 – Freda Skinner, English sculptor (d. 1993).
February 10 – Mallica Reynolds ("Kapo"), Jamaican painter, sculptor and religious leader (d. 1989).
March 4 – Ilona Harima, Finnish painter (d. 1986).
March 7 – Edmund Teske, American photographer (d. 1996).
March 17 – David Park, American painter (d. 1960).
March 23 – Roger Hilton, English painter (d. 1975).
May 14 – Carl Abrahams, Jamaican painter (d. 2005).
May 25 – Will Barnet, American painter, printmaker (d. 2012).
June 11 – Coby Whitmore, American painter and illustrator (d. 1988)
July 15 – Juliet Pannett, English portrait artist (d. 2005).
August 10 – Bruce Ariss, American artist (d. 1994).
September 2 – Romare Bearden, American painter, printmaker (d. 1988).
October 9 – Joe Rosenthal, American Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer (d. 2006).
November 11 – Roberto Matta, Chilean painter (d. 2002).
November 25 – Roelof Frankot, Dutch painter (d. 1984).
December 16 – Brett Weston, American photographer (d. 1993).
December 25 – Louise Bourgeois, French-born painter and sculptor (d. 2010).