1977 in art

Events

• April 19 – Yale Center for British Art gallery, designed by Louis Kahn (died 1974), opens to the public in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
• May 8–24 – Suzanne Lacy's extended performance piece about rape, Three Weeks in May takes place in Los Angeles.
• September 12 – American poet Robert Lowell dies having suffered a heart attack in the back of a cab in New York City while returning to his ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick carrying a portrait of his current wife Lady Caroline Blackwood by her first husband Lucian Freud.
• Starr Kempf constructs the first of his "wind sculptures".
• documenta 6 takes place.
• Douglas Crimp curates "Pictures," featuring Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and others, at Artists Space in New York.
• Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran, designed by Kamran Diba, is inaugurated.

Awards

• Archibald Prize: Kevin Connor – Robert Klippel

Exhibitions

• Retrospective of Valentine Hugo at the Centre Culturel Thibaud de Champagne, Troyes.
• Retrospective of Frida Kahlo at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

Works

• Marina Abramović and Ulay – Expansion in Space
• Walter De Maria – The Lightning Field (land art)
• Audrey Flack - Marilyn (Vanitas)
• Lucian Freud – Naked Man with Rat
• Tina Girouard - "Pinwheel" (performance installation at the New Orleans Museum of Art)
• Gilbert & George – Series of Red Morning works
• David Hockney – My Parents
• Donald Judd – Untitled (Meter Box)
• Nabil Kanso – The Vortices of Wrath (Lebanon 1977)
• Jacob Lawrence – Self-portrait
• Jacques Lipchitz – Bellerophon Taming Pegasus (sculpture, New York City)
• Kathleen McCullough – Cat in Repose (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
• Gordon Matta-Clark – Jacob's Ladder
• Ivan Meštrović – Martin Kukučín (sculptures)
• Robert Morris – Williams Mirrors
• Maria Prymachenko - Two-Headed Chicken
• David Shepherd – Tiger in the Sun
• Cindy Sherman – Untitled Film Stills (through 1980)
• C. Talacca – Bust of Simón Bolívar (bronze, Houston, Texas)
• Jean Tinguely – Tinguely Fountain and Carnival Fountain (Fasnachtsbrunnen) (both kinetic sculptures in Basel)
• Don Wilson – Interlocking Forms (sculpture, Portland, Oregon)
• Felix de Weldon – Statue of Ty Cobb (bronze, Royston, Georgia)
• Audrey Flack - World War II (Vanitas)

Births

• 8 February – Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist, poet and computer programmer.
• 16 April – Florentijn Hofman, Dutch installation artist.
• 14 May – Emeka Ogboh, Nigerian sound and installation artist.
• 5 October – Hugleikur Dagsson, Icelandic cartoonist
• Michael Dean, English sculptor.
• Gregory Halpern, American photographer.

Deaths

• 27 April – Charles Alston, American artist, muralist, and teacher (b. 1907).
• 27 June – Ivan Tabaković, Serbian painter (b. 1898)
• 3 July – Gertrude Abercrombie, American painter (b. 1909).
• 21 July – Lee Miller, American photographer (b. 1907).
• 22 July –Pan Yuliang, Chinese painter (b. 1899)
• 23 August – Naum Gabo, Russian sculptor (b. 1890).
• 3 September – Gianni Vella, Maltese painter and cartoonist (b. 1885)
• 11 September – Augustus Dunbier, American painter (b. 1888).
• 23 September – John Nash, English painter, illustrator, and engraver (b. 1893).
• 25 September – William McMillan, Scottish sculptor (b. 1887) (victim of assault).
• 20 October – Marie-Thérèse Walter, mistress of Pablo Picasso (b. 1909).
• 4 November – Keith Vaughan, English painter (b. 1912) (suicide).
• 5 November – René Goscinny, French comic book author, editor and humorist (b. 1926).
• 21 December – Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter (b. 1889).
• 31 December – Tore Asplund, Swedish-born American painter (b. 1903).

Full date unknown

• Philip Lindsey Clark, English sculptor (b. 1889)
• Walter Pritchard, Scottish stained glass artist, muralist and sculptor (b. 1905)

References

References

1. (Spring 2007). "Suzanne Lacy's Three Weeks in May: Feminist Activist Performance Art as "Expanded Public Pedagogy"". The Johns Hopkins University Press.
2. "The Kitchen: Tina Girouard: Pinwheel".
3. (28 February 2022). "Treasured Paintings Burned in Russian Invasion, Ukrainian Officials Say". The New York Times.
4. (2009). "Dictionary of Maltese Biographies Vol. 2 G–Z". Pubblikazzjonijiet Indipendenza.