March 17 – In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
October 24 – English artist Brian Stonehouse is captured as a Special Operations Executive agent in France.
October 31 – Work ceases on sculpting Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the United States, continued by Lincoln Borglum after the death in March of his father Gutzon Borglum.
December 30 – American art collector Peggy Guggenheim marries exiled German painter Max Ernst in the United States.
Ettore DeGrazia's work appears for the first time in Arizona Highways magazine.
German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, in hiding in the south of France, begins the autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel ("Life? or Theater?: A Song-play").
Indiana University Art Museum established in Bloomington.
The Art Center in La Jolla established in California.
Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Sir James Elder, KBE
Ansel Adams – Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (photograph)
Ethel V. Ashton – Defenders of the Wyoming Country 1778 (United States post office mural, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania)
Max Beckmann – Double Portrait, Max Beckmann and Quappi
Peter Belov – 1941 ("Large Stalin and Red Army")
Paul Cadmus – Aviator
Paul Delvaux – The Phases of the Moon
A. E. Doyle and Associates – Loyal B. Stearns Memorial Fountain (Portland, Oregon)
Sir Russell Drysdale – Moody's pub
Jacob Epstein – Jacob and the Angel (alabaster sculpture, 1940–1)
Ivon Hitchens
Damp Autumn
Interior, Boy in Bed
Yousuf Karsh – The Roaring Lion (photographic portrait of Winston Churchill)
Dame Laura Knight – In For Repairs
Alonzo Victor Lewis – Dr. Mark A. Matthews (bronze bust, Denny Park (Seattle))
Musa McKim – Wildlife in White Mountain and Philip Guston – Pulp Wood Logging (murals at Federal Building (Laconia, New Hampshire))
Roberto Matta
Composition Abstraite
Ecouter Vivre
Foeu
The Initiation (Origine d’un Extrême)
Invasion of the Night
Théorie de l’Arbre
Paul Nash
Battle of Britain
Totes Meer
John Petts – Alun Lewis
Pablo Picasso
Dora Maar au Chat
Tete de femme (Dora Maar) (sculpture)
Horace Pippin – Self-portrait
Albin Polasek – Masaryk Memorial, Chicago
Victor Vasarely – Untitled
Carel Weight
Escape of the Zebra from the Zoo during an Air Raid
It happened to us – daylight raid
April 13 – Jean-Marc Reiser, French comics artist (d. 1983)
May 23 – Martin Puryear, American sculptor
June 7 – Tony Ray-Jones, English photographer (d. 1972)
July 12 – Richard Tuttle, American postminimalist sculptor, painter and installation artist
July 22 – Vaughn Bodē, American underground comix, graphic design and graffiti artist (d. 1975)
August 29 – Ugo Nespolo, Italian painter and filmmaker
September 20 – Dale Chihuly, American glass sculptor.
September 24 – Linda McCartney, née Eastman, American music photographer (d. 1998)
December 6 – Bruce Nauman, American installation and video artist
December 31 – Robert Lenkiewicz, English painter (d. 2002)
date unknown
Mary Kelly, American conceptual artist
James Coleman, Irish installation and video artist
January 10 – John Lavery, Irish painter and war artist (b. 1856)
February 6 – Maximilien Luce, French painter (b. 1858)
March 6 – Gutzon Borglum, American sculptor (b. 1867)
March 30 – Bertha Jaques, American etcher (b. 1863)
April 14 – Guillermo Kahlo, German-Mexican photographer (b. 1871)
April 16 – Émile Bernard, French] Post-Impressionist painter (b. 1868)
October 25 – Robert Delaunay, French painter (b. 1885)
November 7 – Frank Pick, English transport administrator and patron of art and design (b. 1878)
December 3 – Pavel Filonov, Russian painter and poet (b. 1883)
December 5 – Amrita Sher-Gil, Indian painter (b. 1913)
December 30 – El Lissitzky, Russian designer, architect and photographer (b. 1890)
date unknown – William Jacob Baer, American miniature painter (b. 1860)
1941 in art Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
