1988 in art

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The year 1988 in art involved some significant events and new works.

Events

Opening of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, designed by Steven Holl

Artists of Ramingining, Northern Territory, Australia – Aboriginal Memorial
Francis Bacon – Second Version of Triptych 1944
Gordon Bennett – Outsider
Wayne Chabre
- Gargoyles (Eugene, Oregon)
  - Alan Turing
  - Drosophila Fly Head
- Grasshopper (sculpture, Salem, Oregon)
Eldon Garnet – Little Glenn (bronze statue)
Rachel Joynt – People's Island (brass installation, Dublin)
Nabil Kanso – Dance of Salome (first series)
Judith Weinshall Liberman – Holocaust Wall Hangings (first works in series)
Richard Lippold – Ex Stasis (sculpture)
Paul Matisse – Kendall Band (sound sculpture)
David K. Nelson, Jr. – Mirth & Girth
Louise Nevelson – Sky Landscape (sculpture)
Éamonn O'Doherty – Anna Livia (bronze installation, Dublin)
Fred Parhad – Ashurbanipal (bronze, San Francisco)
Zlatko Pounov and Steven Lowe – Mohandas K. Gandhi (sculpture, San Francisco)
Paula Rego – The Dance
Gerhard Richter – Betty
Susan Dorothea White – The First Supper
Christopher Wool – Apocalypse Now ("word painting")

19 March – Isabel Bishop, American painter and graphic artist (b. 1902).
28 March – Neil Williams, American painter (b. 1934).
31 March – Georges Lévis, French comic artist (b. 1924).
3 April – Milton Caniff, American cartoonist (b. 1907).
17 April – Louise Nevelson, Ukrainian-born American artist (b. 1900).
4 May – Stanley Hayter, English-born printmaker (b. 1901).
16 May – Charles Keeping, English illustrator, children's book author and lithographer (b. 1924).
16 June – Andrea Pazienza, Italian comics artist (b. 1956).

12 July – Julian Trevelyan, English printmaker (b.1910).
12 August – Jean-Michel Basquiat, American artist (b. 1960).
21 August – Ray Eames, American artist and architect (b. 1912).
26 September – Marianne Appel, American mural painter and puppet designer (b. 1913).
29 September – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (b. 1912).
12 November – Primo Conti, Italian Futurist artist (b. 1900).
25 November - Alphaeus Philemon Cole, American portrait artist (b. 1876 [sic.])
2 December – Kimon Evan Marengo, Egyptian-born British cartoonist (b. 1904).
30 December – Isamu Noguchi, Japanese American artist and landscape architect (b. 1904).
date unknown
- Reginald George Haggar, ceramic designer
- Chambré Hardman, Irish photographer (b. 1898).
- Nedeljko Gvozdenović, a world-renowned Serbian painter (b. 1902).