1945 in art

Events

• April 15 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp liberated. Among the British war artists who record it soon afterwards are Sgt. Eric Taylor, Leslie Cole, Doris Zinkeisen, Edgar Ainsworth, Mervyn Peake and Mary Kessell.
• April 28 – Professor Anthony Blunt is appointed to succeed Sir Kenneth Clark as Surveyor of the King's Pictures in the United Kingdom.
• May
• * Allied forces reach the Nazi stolen art repository in the salt mines at Altaussee in Austria, finding more than 6,500 paintings.
• * Retreating SS forces destroy the Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings in store at Schloss Immendorf.
• * Ben Nicholson paints still lifes incorporating British Union Flags to mark V-E Day.
• July–December – Han van Meegeren paints his last forgery of a Dutch Golden Age painting, Jesus among the Doctors, before witnesses in Amsterdam to refute charges of having sold genuine Dutch cultural property to Nazis.
• October 25 – Jackson Pollock marries Lee Krasner.
• Constantine Andreou moves to France, having received a scholarship from the French government.
• New York businessman Henry Pearlman acquires Chaim Soutine's View of Céret, the foundation of his collection of modern art.

  Awards

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Lt-General The Hon Edmund Herring, KBC, DSO, MC, ED

  Exhibitions

• January – Mark Rothko exhibition in the Daylight Gallery of Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery on Manhattan.
• March 19 – Jackson Pollock's second solo exhibition opens in the Daylight Gallery of Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century gallery on Manhattan.

  Works

• David Alfaro Siqueiros – El Coronelazo
• C. C. Beall – :File:7WarLoan.jpg|Now... All Together
• Hyman Bloom – :File:Christmas Tree by Hyman Bloom.jpg|Christmas Tree
• Marc Chagall – Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio
• Leslie Cole
• * '
• * :File:LD 5105 Death pits Bergen-Belsen art 1945.jpg|Death pits at Bergen-Belsen
• Salvador Dalí
• * The Apotheosis of Homer
• * Basket of Bread
• * Portrait of a Passionate Woman
• Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza – Portrait of General Franco
• Colin Colahan – Ballet of Wind and Rain
• Russell Drysdale – The Drover's Wife
• Alfred Eisenstaedt – V-J Day in Times Square
• Max Ernst – The Temptation of Saint Anthony
• Nora Heysen – '
• Pablo Picasso – The Charnel House
• Jackson Pollock – Troubled Queen
• Joe Rosenthal – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
• Ben Shahn
• * Death on the Beach
• * Liberation
• Elizabeth Shoumatoff – Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Philip Zec – Here you are. Don't lose it again!
• Doris Zinkeisen – :File:Human Laundry, Belsen by Doris Zinkeisen.jpg|Human Laundry, Belsen

  Births

• January 20 – Susan Rothenberg, American painter
• January 25 – Barbara Kruger, American photographer, graphic artist and sculptor
• January 31 – Joseph Kosuth, American conceptual artist
• March 4 – Rose Finn-Kelcey, English performance and installation artist
• March 8 – Anselm Kiefer, German sculptor
• June 2 – Richard Long, English land artist
• June 14 – Jörg Immendorff, German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor
• June 30 – Sean Scully, Irish-born painter
• July 16 – Victor Sloan, Irish visual artist
• July 28 – Jim Davis, American cartoonist, creator of "Garfield"
• August 4 – Paul McCarthy, American sculptor and installation and video artist
• August 9 – Posy Simmonds, English cartoonist
• August 18 – Brummbaer, German digital artist
• August 19 – Peter Reginato, American sculptor
• September 27 – Jack Goldstein, Canadian-born American performance and conceptual artist turned painter
• October 13 – Heinz Plank, German painter, draughtsman and graphic artist
• October 23 – Maggi Hambling, English painter and sculptor
• November 14 – David Nash, English sculptor and academic
• date unknown
• * Suzanne Lacy, American installation, video and performance artist
• * Daisy Youngblood, American ceramic artist and sculptor

  Deaths

• January 7 – Alexander Stirling Calder, American sculptor
• February 7 – H. J. Ward, American illustrator
• February 21 – Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, Danish sculptor
• March 5 – Albert Richards, English war artist ; killed on active service in the Netherlands
• March 6 – Milena Pavlović-Barili, Serbian painter and poet ; died in riding accident in the United States
• March 10 – Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, English painter
• March 31 – Hando Ruus, Estonian painter ; presumed executed as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union
• April – Josef Čapek, Czech painter and writer ; died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
• April 22 – Käthe Kollwitz, German painter, lithographer and sculptor
• May 5 – René Lalique, French glass designer
• June 15 – Nikola Avramov, Bulgarian painter
• September 16 – David Young Cameron, Scottish painter and etcher
• October 24 – Franklin Carmichael, Canadian painter
• October 31 – Ignacio Zuloaga, Basque painter
• November 23 – Ljubomir Ivanović, Serbian painter
• November – Thomas Hennell, English painter ; presumed killed on active service in Indonesia
• December 20 – Ong Schan Tchow, Chinese artist ; died in Malaysia
• date unknown – Franz Sedlacek, Austrian painter ; presumed killed on active service in Poland