May – Ambrose Heal and others found the Design and Industries Association in London.
c. May – Publication of the first modern book illustrated with wood engravings, Frances Cornford's Spring Morning (published by The Poetry Bookshop, London) with engravings by the poet's cousin Gwen Raverat.
June 10 – The only Vorticist exhibition staged opens at the Doré Gallery in London.
October 24 – Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's frescos, Translation of the House of Loreto, in the Church of the Scalzi (Venice) are destroyed by an Austrian bombardment.
December 19 – Kasimir Malevich stages the 0.10 Exhibition and originates Suprematism.
Harper's Bazaar hires Erté to design its covers.
Edward McKnight Kauffer is given his first commission to design a poster for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London.
Shōzaburō Watanabe originates shin-hanga collaborative woodblock printing in Japan.
The first of the 'Etruscan terracotta warriors', forged by sculptor Alfredo Fioravanti with the Riccardi family, is purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
14-year-old Alice Prin ("Kiki de Montparnasse") is posing (nude) for sculptors in Paris.
Works
George Bellows – Riverfront No. 1
Frank Weston Benson – Red and Gold
Umberto Boccioni
Charge of the Lancers
Horizontal Volumes
Marc Chagall – The Poet Reclining
William Merritt Chase – Self-portrait
Giorgio de Chirico – The Double Dream of Spring
Marcel Duchamp – begins producing readymades
Jacob Epstein – bust of Admiral Lord Fisher
J. W. Godward – In The Prime Of The Summer Time
Alexandre Jacovleff – The Violinist
Eric Kennington - The Kensingtons at Laventie
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Brandenburger Tor
Self-portrait as a Soldier
Carl Larsson – Midvinterblot
Wyndham Lewis – The Crowd
Kazimir Malevich – Black Square
Henri Matisse – Le rideau jaune
Jean Metzinger – Soldier at a Game of Chess
C. R. W. Nevinson
La Mitrailleuse
Returning to the Trenches (approximate date)
Diego Rivera – cubist portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Isaac Rosenberg – Self-portrait
Ladislav Šaloun – Jan Hus Memorial (Prague)
Kathleen Scott – statue of her late husband Robert Falcon Scott
Zinaida Serebriakova
Harvest
Peasants
Fred Spear – Enlist (poster)
W. L. Wyllie – The track of Lusitania: view of casualties and survivors in the water and in lifeboats
Konstantin Yuon – March Sun
Anders Zorn – Self-portrait in Red
Births
January 3 – Jack Levine, American Social Realist painter and printmaker (d. 2010)
January 24 – Robert Motherwell, American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker (d. 1991).
February 11 – Mervyn Levy, Welsh artist and critic (d. 1996).
March 10 – Harry Bertoia, Italian-born American artist and furniture designer (d. 1978).
April 4 – Louis Archambault, Canadian sculptor (d. 2003).
April 6 – Tadeusz Kantor, Polish painter, Assemblage artist, set designer and theatre director (d. 1990)
April 15 – Elizabeth Catlett, African-American artist
May 3 – Richard Lippold, American sculptor (d. 2002)
May 20 – Sam Golden, American paint maker (d. 1997)
June 11 – José Caballero, Spanish artist (d. 1991)
June 17 – Gunther Gerzso, Mexican abstract painter (d. 2000)
August 14 – Mary Fedden, English painter (d. 2012)
August 28
Patrick Hennessy, Irish painter (d. 1980)
Tasha Tudor, American illustrator and author of children's books (d. 2008)
October 13
Terry Frost, English Abstract artist (d. 2003)
Ricco Wassmer, Swiss painter (d. 1972)
October 24 – Bob Kane, American comic book artist and writer (d. 1998)
November 9 – André François, French cartoonist (d. 2005)
November 26 – Inge King, German-born Australian sculptor (d. 2016)
Deaths
February 25 – Flaxman Charles John Spurrell, English archaeologist and photographer (b. 1842)
April 3 – Nadežda Petrović, Serbian Fauvist painter (b. 1873)
April 9 – Karl Bitter, Austrian American sculptor (b. 1867)
May 7 – Sir Hugh Lane, Irish-born art dealer, collector and benefactor (b. 1875; killed in sinking of the RMS Lusitania)
July 10 – Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Dutch marine painter (b. 1831)
July 11 – Albert Schickedanz, Austro-Hungarian architect and painter in the Eclectic style (b. 1846)
September 14 – Alfred Agache, French academic painter (b. 1843)
October 24 – Désiré Charnay, French archaeologist and pioneer photographer (b. 1828)
November 28 – Kobayashi Kiyochika, Japanese ukiyo-e painter and printmaker (b. 1847)
December 22 – Arthur Hughes, English painter and illustrator (b. 1832)
date unknown
Luigi Crosio, Italian painter (b. 1835)
Kikuchi Shingaku, Japanese photographer (b. 1832)
Hilda Sjölin, Swedish photographer (b. 1835)
Krikor Torosian, Armenian illustrator (b. 1884; killed in Armenian Genocide)
