Events from the year 1956 in art.

• March 1 – Replica statue of the Discus Thrower dedicated in Washington, D.C., as a gift from the Italian government to commemorate the return of looted art objects after World War II.^[1]
• March – 56 Group founded, to promote modernist art in Wales. Subsequently renamed 56 Group Wales.
• September 17 – Release in the United States of the biographical film Lust for Life with Kirk Douglas portraying Vincent van Gogh and Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin.
• Le mystère Picasso, a French documentary film, shows Pablo Picasso in the act of creating paintings for the camera (which he subsequently destroys so that they will exist only on film).
• William Klein publishes his photo essay New York, 1954–55.
• Shanghai Art Museum, the predecessor of the China Art Museum, opens.
• English curator Jim Ede settles at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, England.
• English painter Edward Seago joins a tour of the Antarctic.
• Two attacks are made on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa in the Louvre, Paris.^[2][3]

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Mr Albert Namatjira
• Kate Greenaway Medal – Edward Ardizzone for Tim All Alone

• Lust for Life

• Laurence Bradshaw – Monument to Karl Marx at Highgate Cemetery, London (including bronze bust)
• Alexander Calder – Red Mobile
• Frank Cadogan Cowper – The Golden Bowl
• Salvador Dalí – Living Still Life
• M. C. Escher – Print Gallery (lithograph)
• Max Ernst – L’oiseau Rose
• Helen Frankenthaler – Eden
• Richard Hamilton – Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? (collage)
• Rudolf Hausner – The Ark of Odysseus
• Eduardo Kingman – La Lavendera
• Roy Lichtenstein – Ten Dollar Bill (lithograph)
• O. Winston Link - Hotshot Eastbound (black-and-white photograph)^[4]
• L. S. Lowry – The Floating Bridge
• Joan Mitchell
  • Café^[5]
  • Hemlock^[6]
• Candido Portinari – Self-portrait
• Norman Rockwell – The Scoutmaster
• Kay Sage – Le Passage
• Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov – Cafe Gurzuf
• Charles Sheeler – On a Shaker Theme
• David Wynne – Sir Thomas Beecham (bronzes)

• August 9–September 9 – This Is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, featuring principally the interdisciplinary ICA Independent Group, including early examples of Pop Art.^[7]

• January 2 – Lynda Barry, American cartoonist
• January 19 – Junpei Satoh, Japanese Western-style painter
• February 24 – Fiona Graham-Mackay, née Bain, British portrait painter
• May 25 – Andrea Pazienza, Italian comics artist (d. 1988)
• date unknown
  • Lee Bae, South Korean visual artist
  • Emma Biggs, English mosaicist
  • Cornelia Parker, English sculptor and installation artist
  • Veronica Ryan, Montserrat-born British sculptor
  • Mackenzie Thorpe, English painter and sculptor

• January 13 – Lyonel Feininger, German American painter and cartoonist (b. 1871)
• April 23 – Cecile Walton, Scottish painter, illustrator and sculptor (b. 1891)
• May 3 – Peter Watson, English arts benefactor (murdered) (b. 1908)
• June 8 – Marie Laurencin, French painter and engraver (b. 1883)
• June 11 - Frank Brangwyn, Welsh painter (b. 1867)
• July 26 – Louis Raemaekers, Dutch painter and cartoonist (b. 1869)
• August 7 – LeMoine FitzGerald, Canadian painter (b. 1890)
• August 11 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)^[8]
• August 16 – Theodor Pallady, Romanian painter (b. 1871)
• November 3 – Jean Metzinger, French painter (b. 1883)
• December 16 – Nina Hamnett, British painter, model and designer (b. 1890)
• Mohamed Nagy, Egyptian painter (b. 1888)

• 1956 in Fine Arts of the Soviet Union