10 September – Picasso's painting Guernica is returned from New York to Madrid.
Archibald Prize: Eric Smith – Rudy Komon
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)
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.
4 November – Paul Tucker, Canadian visual artist and graphic novel and webcomic illustrator.
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).
7 September – Christy Brown, Irish author, painter and poet (b.1932).
12 October – Enzo Plazzotta, Italian-born British sculptor (b.1921).
20 October – Annot, German painter (b.1894).
22 November – Corrado Parducci, Italian-American architectural sculptor (b.1900).
Hans Coper, German-born English studio potter (b.1920).
Art Frahm, American pin-up and advertising artist (b.1907).
Pinchus Kremegne, Belarusian sculptor, painter and lithographer (b.1890).
Nano Reid, Irish painter (b.1905).
1981 in art Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
