1938 in art

Events

Albert Namatjira exhibition in Melbourne includes over 2,000 works, the first solo display of indigenous Australian art.
Kröller-Müller Museum, designed by Henry van de Velde, opens in Otterlo, Netherlands.
American art collector Louis J. Caldor 'discovers' Grandma Moses.

Vilmos Aba-Novák – Fair in Transylvania
Rita Angus – Head of a Maori Boy
Thomas Hart Benton – Haystack
Constantin Brâncuși – The Endless Column (sculpture)
Javier Bueno – The Fighter of Madrid
Marc Chagall – White Crucifixion
William Coldstream – Bolton
Salvador Dalí
- Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
- Rainy Taxi
Charles Despiau – Assia (sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Arthur Dove – Swing Music
M. C. Escher – Sky and Water II (lithograph)
Leonor Fini – Composition with Figures on a Terrace
Frida Kahlo
- Four Inhabitants of Mexico City
- Self-Portrait with Monkey
- The Suicide of Dorothy Hale
- What the Water Gave Me
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – Violet House in Front of a Snowy Mountain
L. S. Lowry – Family Group
René Magritte – Time Transfixed
Aristide Maillol – Air
Ronald Moody – Tacet (carved wood head)
Paul Nash
- Landscape from a Dream
- Nocturnal Landscape
John Petts – Fishwife of Ynys Mon
Pablo Picasso – Maya with Doll
Walter Sickert – Sir Thomas Beecham Conducting
Ignacio Zuloaga – The Alcázar in Flames (Heroic Landscape of Toledo)

January 2
- David Bailey, English photographer
- Robert Smithson, American artist (d. 1973)
January 7 – Roland Topor, French illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker (d. 1997)
February 13 – Joan Brown, American figurative painter (d. 1990)
March 6 – Pauline Boty, English pop art painter (d. 1966)
March 15 – Dick Higgins, English composer, poet, printer and early Fluxus artist (d. 1998)
April 20 – Andrew Vicari, Welsh-born portrait painter (d. 2016)
May 12 – Paul Huxley, English painter and academic
May 18 – Janet Fish, American Realist painter
July 24 – Eugene J. Martin, American visual artist (d. 2005)
July 28 – Robert Hughes, Australian-born art critic (d. 2012)
August 19 – Robert Graham, Mexican-American sculptor (d. 2008)
August 29 - Hermann Nitsch, Austrian performance artist
September 25 – Bill Owens, American photographer
September 27 - Günter Brus, Austrian performance artist
October 15 – Brice Marden, American painter
October 20 – Iain Macmillan, Scottish photographer (d. 2006)
November 10 – Claude Serre, French cartoonist (d. 1998)
date unknown
- John Behan, Irish sculptor
- Paul Neagu, Romanian-born artist (d. 2004)

January 1 – Alice Bailly, Swiss painter and multimedia artist (b. 1872)
January 19 – Rosa Mayreder, Austrian freethinker, author, painter, musician and feminist (b. 1858)
February 3 – Niels Skovgaard, Danish sculptor and painter (b. 1858)
April 7 – Suzanne Valadon, French artists' model and painter, mother of Utrillo (b. 1865)
April 24 – John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, Canadian historical portrait painter (b. 1850)
May 22 – William Glackens, American realist painter (b. 1870)
June 15 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German Expressionist painter (b. 1880; suicide)
October 24 – Ernst Barlach, German Expressionist sculptor (b. 1870)