Events from the year 1981 in art.

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• 10 September – Picasso's painting Guernica is returned from New York to Madrid.
• Blek le Rat begins his stencil graffiti art in Paris.

• Archibald Prize: Eric Smith – Rudy Komon

• 9 June – Black Art an'done opens at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in England.

• Tony Cragg – Britain as Seen from the North
• John Doubleday – Statue of Charlie Chaplin (Leicester Square, London)
• Don Eckland – Emergence (bronze, Eugene, Oregon)
• Bryan Hunt – Arch Falls (bronze, Houston, Texas)
• Nabil Kanso – Dreamvision series of paintings completed
• Ellsworth Kelly – Curve XXIV (sculpture, Seattle)
• Carlo Maria Mariani – The Constellation of Leo
• Ana Mendieta Maroya (Esculturas Rupestres) (executed in caves in Cuba)^[1]
• Odd Nerdrum – Twilight
• Helmut Newton – Sie kommen! ("They're coming!", photographic diptych; published in French Vogue, November)
• Richard Serra – Tilted Arc, Federal Plaza, New York City (dismantled 1989)
• Andy Warhol – Myths series
• Aubrey Williams – Shostakovich series of paintings completed

• 15 April – Seth Wulsin, American artist.
• 19 April – Saskia de Brauw, Dutch model and artist
• 4 November – Paul Tucker, Canadian visual artist and graphic novel and webcomic illustrator.
• 20 November – Scott Hutchison, Scottish singer, songwriter, guitarist, and visual artist (d. 2018)^[2]

• 19 January – Francesca Woodman, 22, American photographer
• 4 April - Isaac Frenkel Frenel, Israeli French painter and sculptor (b. 1899)
• 8 May – Grethe Jürgens, German painter (b. 1899)
• 25 May – Armando de Armas Romero, Cuban painter (b. 1914)
• 28 May – Jean Paul Slusser, painter, designer, art critic, professor, and director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (b. 1886)
• 16 June – Hans Coper, German-born English studio potter (b. 1920)^[3]
• 19 June – Lotte Reiniger, German silhouette animator and film director (b.1899)
• 29 June – Russell Drysdale, Australian artist (b. 1912)
• 8 July – Isaac Soyer, Russian-born American painter, (b. 1902)
• 16 July – John E. Berninger, American landscape painter (b. 1896)
• 7 September – Christy Brown, Irish author, painter and poet (b. 1932)
• 12 October – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (b. 1921)
• 13 October – Antonio Berni, Argentine painter (b. 1905)
• 20 October – Annot, German painter (b. 1894).
• 23 October – Reg Butler, English sculptor (b. 1913)
• 17 November – Nano Reid, Irish painter (b. 1905)
• 22 November – Corrado Parducci, Italian-American architectural sculptor (b. 1900)
• 5 December - Max Spivak - 74, American muralist (b. 1901)
• 28 December – Bram van Velde, Dutch painter (b. 1895)

• 1981 in fine arts of the Soviet Union