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Events from the year 1949 in art.

• Formation of Penwith Society of Arts in St Ives, Cornwall.^[1]
• Philadelphia Artists Equity is established in Pennsylvania, United States, to protect artists' rights and improve working and economic conditions for fine artists.^[2]
• Young Contemporaries exhibition, initiated by Carel Weight for the British Society of Artists Galleries, establishes the New Contemporaries series.^[3]
• David Jones begins a 5-year sequence of watercolours of flowers in glasses.
• Yves Klein paints his first monochromes, while apprenticed to a picture-frame maker in London.

• Archibald Prize: Arthur Murch – Bonar Dunlop

• Francis Bacon – Head III, Head IV, Head V, Head VI
• Brenda Chamberlain – The Fisherman's Return (National Museum of Wales)
• Salvador Dalí
  • Leda Atomica
  • The Madonna of Port Lligat (original version; Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
• Paul Delvaux – The Temple
• Sir William Reid Dick – Lady Godiva (equestrian bronze, Coventry)
• Sir Russell Drysdale – West Wyalong
• Frida Kahlo
  • Diego and I
  • The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego, and Señor Xolotl
• Tadeusz Kantor – Man with Umbrella
• Wifredo Lam = Femme avec un Oiseau^[4]
• L. S. Lowry
  • The Canal Bridge
  • The Football Match
  • The Spire
• Henry Moore – Family Group (first casting)
• Robert Motherwell – Five in the Afternoon
• Barnett Newman – Abraham
• Pablo Picasso – Dove
• William Scott
  • Frying Pan and Eggs
  • Still Life with Candlestick
• Graham Sutherland – Somerset Maugham
• Steffen Thomas – Statue of Eugene Talmadge
• Vladimir Tretchikoff – The Dying Swan
• Boris Vladimirski – Roses for Stalin
• Lucien Wercollier – Le prisonnier politique (bronze)
• Andrzej Wróblewski – Execution V

• February 17 – Peter Kennard, English photomontage artist
• February 18 – Charlie Waite, English landscape photographer
• February 27 – Richard P. Cook, English artist
• March 11 – Griselda Pollock, South African-born feminist visual art historian and theorist
• April 9 – Stephen Hickman, American illustrator, sculptor and author
• May 7 – Deborah Butterfield, American sculptor
• May 12 – Ross Bleckner, American painter
• July 6 – Tibor Kalman, Hungarian-American graphic designer (d. 1999)
• August 12 – Glòria Muñoz, Spanish painter
• August 15 – Richard Deacon, British sculptor
• August 27 – Istvan Kantor, Hungarian-Canadian performance artist
• Jim Dolan, American sculptor
• P. K. Mahanandia, Indian-born portrait artist
• Lincoln Perry -American painter, muralist, and sculptor

• March 17 – Aleksandra Ekster, painter and designer, Art Deco pioneer (b. 1882)
• May 3 – Mariano Fortuny, fashion designer (b. 1871)
• May 15 – Henri Beau, Canadian Impressionist painter (b. 1863)
• June 21 – Edward Wadsworth, English Vorticist painter (b. 1889)
• August 8 – Joaquín Torres García, Uruguayan painter (b. 1874)
• September 7 - José Clemente Orozco, Mexican painter and illustrator (b. 1883)
• September 25 – Henri Manguin, painter (b. 1874)
• November 3 – Solomon R. Guggenheim, art collector (b. 1861)
• November 19 – James Ensor, painter (b. 1860)
• November 27 – Vincenzo Irolli, Italian painter (b. 1860)
• December 28 – Emília dos Santos Braga, Portuguese painter (b. 1867)
• (Herbert Barnard) John Everett, English marine artist (b. 1877)

• 1949 in Fine Arts of the Soviet Union