Events from the year 1921 in art.

Events

• March – Puhl & Wagner are contracted to decorate the interior of the Golden Hall (Stockholm City Hall) with neo-Byzantine mosaics designed by Einar Forseth.
• September–October – 5x5=25 abstract art exhibition held in Moscow.
• The experimental short documentary film Manhatta is shot by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand in New York City.
• Thomas Gainsborough's c. 1770 portrait The Blue Boy from the collection of the Duke of Westminster is sold by dealer Joseph Duveen to California magnate Henry E. Huntington for $728,800 (£182,200; equivalent to $12.3 million in 2023), according to Duveen's bill, a record price for any painting at this time.^[1]
• Paul Sérusier publishes his ABC of Painting.
• André Delatte opens his glasswares studio in Nancy.
• Simon Rodia begins construction of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: W B McInnes – Desbrowe Annear

Works

• Carlo Carrà – The Engineer's Lover
• Dora Carrington – Farm at Watendlath
• Charles Demuth – Incense of a New Church
• Guy Pène du Bois – An American Oriental
• Marcel Duchamp – Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? (assisted readymade)
• Max Ernst – The Elephant Celebes
• Jean Louis Germos - Matoax
• Lady Feodora Gleichen – 37th (British) Division memorial (Monchy-le-Preux, France)
• Daniel Chester French – Statue of the Marquis de Lafayette
• J. W. Godward – Megilla
• Duncan Grant – Bathers by the Pond
• Auguste Herbin – Le Cateau-Cambrésis
• Edward Hopper – Girl at Sewing Machine
• Seán Keating – Men of the South
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
  • Two Brothers
  • View of Basel and the Rhine
• Boris Kustodiev – Portrait of Chaliapin
• Fernand Léger
  • Man and Woman
  • Still Life with a Beer Mug
• Wyndham Lewis – Mr Wyndham Lewis as a Tyro
• Sir Bertram Mackennal – Bronze equestrian statue of King Edward VII (Waterloo Place, London)
• Piet Mondrian
  • Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue
  • Tableau I
• Paul Moreau-Vauthier – Western Front demarcation stones
• Edvard Munch – Model by the Wicker Chair^[2]
• Alfred Munnings – The Red Prince Mare
• Francis Picabia
  • The Cacodylic Eye
  • Cannibale
• Pablo Picasso
  • Reading the Letter
  • Three Musicians (two versions)
• Man Ray (with Erik Satie) – The Gift (readymade sculpture)
• Stanley Spencer
  • Christ's Entry into Jerusalem
  • Crucifixion
• Félix Vallotton – Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau
• Han van Meegeren – Hertje ("The fawn")

Births

January to June

• January 1 – César Baldaccini, French sculptor (d. 1998)
• January 3 – Bill Gold, American graphic designer (d. 2018)
• January 14 – Norris Embry, American neo-expressionist painter (d. 1981)
• January 24 – Sybil Connolly, Welsh-Irish fashion designer (d. 1998)
• January 27 – Georges Mathieu, French abstract painter (d. 2012)
• February 2 – Pietro Cascella, Italian painter and sculptor (d. 2008)
• February 5 – Ken Adam, German-born British film set designer (d. 2016)
• February 13 – Louis Féraud, French fashion designer and artist (d. 1999)
• February 20 – Michael Ayrton, English sculptor, graphic artist and writer (d. 1975)
• February 22 – Cecil King, Irish abstract-minimalist painter (d. 1986)
• February 23 – John Latham, Zambian conceptual artist (d. 2006)
• March 2 – Ernst Haas, Austrian photographer (d. 1986)
• March 13 – Al Jaffee, American cartoonist (d. 2023)
• March 28 – Norman Bluhm, American painter (d. 1999)
• April 21 – Dimitrije Bašičević, Serbian painter and sculptor (d. 1987)
• April 23 – William Brice, American painter and teacher (d. 2008)
• April 25 – Karel Appel, Dutch painter, sculptor and poet (d. 2006)
• May 18 – Joan Eardley, British painter (d. 1963)
• May 29 – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (d. 1981)
• June 20 – Fiore de Henriquez, Italian-born British sculptor (d. 2004)

July to December

• July 16
  • Ernst Beyeler, Swiss art dealer and collector (d. 2010)
  • Guy Laroche, French fashion designer (d. 1989)
• July 16 – Boscoe Holder, Trinidadian painter (d. 2007)
• July 17 – Richard Jeranian, Armenian painter, draftsman and lithographer (d. 2019)
• August 4 – Jean Pierre Capron, French painter (d. 1997)
• August 18 – Zdzisław Żygulski, Jr., Polish art historian (d. 2015)
• August 28 – Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, French photographer (d. 2004)
• September 22 – Will Elder, American illustrator and comic book artist (d. 2008)
• September 25 – Jacques Martin, French comics creator (d. 2010)
• September 27 – Jean-Pierre Sudre, French photographer (d. 1997)
• October 26 – Raymond Nasher, American art collector (d. 2007)
• November 12 – Gerson Leiber, American painter, lithographer and sculptor (d. 2018)
• November 17 – Albert Bertelsen, Danish artist (d. 2019)
• November 26 – Françoise Gilot, French watercolorist and ceramicist (d. 2023)

Deaths

• January 18 – Adolf von Hildebrand, sculptor (born 1847)
• January 30 – John Francis Murphy, landscape painter (born 1853)
• February 2 – Antonio Jacobsen, Danish-American maritime artist (born 1850)
• February 3 – William Strang, painter and engraver (born 1859)
• February 4 – Eugène Burnand, Swiss painter (born 1850)
• February 11 – William Blake Richmond, English painter and designer (born 1842)
• February 21 – George Dunlop Leslie, English genre painter (born 1835)
• March 2 – Johann Friedrich Engel, German painter (born 1844)
• March 23 – Jean-Paul Laurens, painter and sculptor (born 1838)
• March 24 – Marcus Stone, painter and illustrator (born 1840)
• March 30 – Franz Benque, photographer (born 1841)
• April 6 – Vardges Sureniants, Armenian painter (born 1860)
• April 30 – Mabel Esplin, English stained-glass artist (born 1874)
• May 5 – William Friese-Greene, photographer and cinematographer (born 1855)
• May 29 – Abbott Handerson Thayer, painter (born 1849)
• June – Frank Enders, painter and etcher (born 1860)
• October 7 – John Thomson, photographer (born 1837)
• November 1 – Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, painter (born 1848)
• November 12 – Fernand Khnopff, Symbolist painter (born 1858)
• November 13 – William Robert Colton, sculptor (born 1867)