April 15 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp liberated. Among the British war artists (official and unofficial) who record it soon afterwards are Sgt. Eric Taylor, Leslie Cole, Doris Zinkeisen, Edgar Ainsworth (of Picture Post), Mervyn Peake and Mary Kessell.
April 28 – Professor Anthony Blunt is appointed to succeed Sir Kenneth Clark as Surveyor of the King's Pictures in the United Kingdom.
May
Allied forces reach the Nazi stolen art repository in the salt mines at Altaussee in Austria, finding more than 6,500 paintings.
Retreating SS forces destroy the Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings.
Ben Nicholson paints still lifes incorporating British Union Flags to mark V-E Day.
July–December – Han van Meegeren paints his last forgery of a Dutch Golden Age painting, Jesus among the Doctors, before witnesses in Amsterdam to refute charges of having sold genuine Dutch cultural property to Nazis (for which he was arrested on May 29).
October 25 – Jackson Pollock marries Lee Krasner.
Constantine Andreou moves to France, having received a scholarship from the French government.
New York businessman Henry Pearlman acquires Chaim Soutine's View of Céret, the foundation of his collection of modern art.
Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Lt-General The Hon Edmund Herring, KBC, DSO, MC, ED
C. C. Beall – Now... All Together (War Loan poster)
Hyman Bloom – Christmas Tree
Marc Chagall – Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio
Leslie Cole
Belsen Camp – The Compound for Women
Death pits at Bergen-Belsen
Salvador Dalí
The Apotheosis of Homer
Basket of Bread
Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza – Portrait of General Franco
Colin Colahan – Ballet of Wind and Rain
Russell Drysdale – The Drover's Wife
Nora Heysen – Transport driver (Aircraftswoman Florence Miles)
Jackson Pollock – Troubled Queen (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Joe Rosenthal – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (photograph)
David Alfaro Siqueiros – El Coronelazo
Ben Shahn
Death on the Beach
Liberation
Elizabeth Shoumatoff – Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Philip Zec – Here you are. Don't lose it again! (political cartoon)
Doris Zinkeisen – Human Laundry, Belsen
January 20 – Susan Rothenberg, painter
January 25 – Barbara Kruger, photographer, graphic artist and sculptor
January 31 – Joseph Kosuth, conceptual artist
March 8 – Anselm Kiefer, sculptor.
June 14 – Jörg Immendorff, German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor (d.2007)
June 30 – Sean Scully, painter
July 16 – Victor Sloan, Irish visual artist
July 28 – Jim Davis, American cartoonist, creator of "Garfield"
August 4 – Paul McCarthy, American sculptor, installation artist and video artist
August 9 – Posy Simmonds, English cartoonist
August 18 – Brummbaer, digital artist
August 19 – Peter Reginato, sculptor
September 27 – Jack Goldstein, Canadian-born American performance and Conceptual artist turned painter (d.2003)
November 14 – David Nash, English sculptor and academic
date unknown
Robert Bishop, bondage artist (d.1991)
Suzanne Lacy, installation, video and performance artist
Catherine Leroy, French photographer (d.2006)
Daisy Youngblood, ceramic artist and sculptor
January 7 – Alexander Stirling Calder, American sculptor (b. 1870)
February 21 – Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, Danish sculptor (born 1863)
March 5 – Albert Richards, English war artist (b. 1919); killed on active service in the Netherlands
March 6 – Milena Pavlović-Barili, Serbian painter and poet (b. 1909); died in riding accident in the United States
March 31 – Hando Ruus, Estonian painter (b. 1917); presumed executed as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union
April – Josef Čapek, Czech painter and writer (b. 1887); died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
April 22 – Käthe Kollwitz, German painter, lithographer and sculptor (b. 1867)
May 5 – René Lalique, French glass designer (b. 1860)
June 15 – Nikola Avramov, Bulgarian painter (b. 1897)
September 16 – David Young Cameron, Scottish painter and etcher (b. 1865)
October 24 – Franklin Carmichael, Canadian painter (b. 1890)
October 31 – Ignacio Zuloaga, Basque painter (b. 1870)
November 23 – Ljubomir Ivanović, Serbian painter (b. 1882)
November – Thomas Hennell, English painter (b. 1903); presumed killed on active service in Indonesia
December 20 – Ong Schan Tchow, Chinese artist (b. 1900); died in Malaysia
date unknown – Franz Sedlacek, Austrian painter (b. 1891); presumed killed on active service in Poland
1945 in art Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
