Obituaries

Thomas Kong, who transformed a Chicago convenience store into an art environment, has died

Beloved in Chicago, the artist worked in a small corner shop that doubled as his studio

Claire Voon

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Remembering Myriam Ullens, art collector, and philanthropist, who launched the first contemporary art museum in China

Belgian entrepreneur in fashion, food and art, co-founded the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, in Beijing, with her husband, Guy Ullens

Catherine Hickley

Harry Belafonte, singer, actor and civil rights champion inspired by artists' involvement in social causes, has died, aged 96

Belafonte cited Pablo Picasso and his artist friend Charles White among the visual and performing artists whose support of social justice movements inspired his activism

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Remembering Barry Humphries, art lover, artist and creator of Dame Edna Everage, who has died, aged 89

Australian comedian and actor was a passionate champion of museums, libraries and the visual arts, and a collector of late 19th-century artists and authors

Kwame Brathwaite, photographer who encapsulated ‘Black is beautiful’ movement, has died, aged 85

The New York photographer pioneered lighting and developing techniques that helped transformed how Black figures were photographed and seen

Emily Fisher Landau, contemporary art collector and important Whitney Museum benefactor, has died, aged 102

Landau, whose discerning eye and aesthetic curiosity made her a fixture in the art world from the 1980s onward, began collecting after receiving an insurance settlement for a jewellery heist at her home

Torey Akers

India’s ‘first installation artist’ Vivan Sundaram has died, aged 79

Multi-disciplinary practitioner was inspired by the 1968 Paris demonstrations to organise artist and student group protests during Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule of 1975-77

Kabir Jhala

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Remembering Phyllida Barlow, one of the most significant, and original, British artists of recent years

The sculptor, erudite and irreverent, was known for the power and scale of her site-specific installations

Ben Luke

Remembering Balkrishna Doshi, artist, teacher and father of modernist Indian architecture, who has died, aged 95

Innovative architect was at heart of rebuilding independent India, a protégé of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, and winner of the Pritzker Prize and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal

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Remembering Richard Verdi, art historian and long-time director of the Barber Institute, who has died, aged 81

An inspirational teacher, charismatic museum director, Poussin scholar and curator, he was working to the end

Hannah Higham

Phyllida Barlow—British sculptor who found global fame after retiring from teaching—has died, aged 78

Artist who taught Rachel Whiteread and Tacita Dean during a decades-long career at London's Slade School of Art, won critical recognition in her mid-sixties for her massive, site-specific installations

Gareth Harris

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Remembering Norman Dilworth, a champion of Concrete Art, who has died, aged 92

The Wigan-born sculptor became attuned to the modern movement in Europe after making his name with construction-based reliefs and sculptures in Britain

Jon Wood

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Rafael Viñoly—museum 'starchitect' who believed in experience over aesthetics—has died, aged 78

Uruguayan-born architect had an acute understanding of the visual arts and produced prize-winning buildings

Anthony Green—whose wife Mary was the muse for a unique set of narrative paintings—has died, aged 83

Nearly all his more than 600 irregularly-shaped canvases capture aspects of six decades of married life

Martin Bailey

'Godmother of Miami's art scene', Mira Lehr, has died aged 88

Lehr was the co-founder of the Continuum women's art collective and used her art to address the challenges of global warming and rising sea levels

Alfred Leslie, rising star of Abstract Expressionism who embraced figuration, has died, aged 95

After rising to prominence in New York’s AbEx scene of the 1950s, Leslie devoted much of his career to honing a style of monumental figuration that was decades ahead of its time

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'A south London version of the fabled homunculus': Norman Rosenthal remembers the multi-talented artist Tom Phillips

In a six-decade career, the British artist also composed and performed music, published books and was an expert on African art

Norman Rosenthal

Michael Snow, avant-garde film-maker and sculptor, has died aged 94

The witty Canadian polymath caused a sensation with his 1967 underground film "Wavelength" and enjoyed public dispute over his city sculptures

Larry Humber

Marilyn Stafford, a pioneer of street and fashion photography, has died, aged 97

Social observation was key to the work of the recently rediscovered protégée of Francesco Scavullo and Henri Cartier-Bresson

Claudia Barbieri Childs

Influential Düsseldorf dealer Hans Mayer—the first to show Warhol in Germany—dies aged 82

The gallerist is credited with introducing European audiences to post-war US artists

Gareth Harris and Philippe Regnier

Ronald Feldman, art dealer who ‘championed big ideas’, has died, aged 84

Feldman, an early supporter of artists like Joseph Beuys and Chris Burden, opened his gallery in 1971 and quickly established himself as a gallerist willing to take risks

Pope Benedict XVI, for eight years proprietor in trust of the Vatican's library and art collection, has died aged 95

The German-born conservative pontiff, a noted theological scholar, tried to accommodate contemporary art but became a subject of satire

Remembering Vivienne Westwood, godmother of punk and designer to the art tribe, who has died aged 81

The outspoken and original couturier referenced historical costume along with portraiture and campaigned for free access to museums

Jane Mulvagh

Football legend Pelé, a muse for Warhol and street art icon, has died aged 82

Martin Parr and Juergen Teller are among the artists who captured the Brazilian star's gift for friendship and personal diplomacy

The artist Dorothy Iannone, hailed as a ‘freedom fighter’, dies aged 89

She confronted censorship issues including a legal battle over Henry Miller novel

Gareth Harris

The Year in Review 2022analysis

Remembering Elizabeth II—a master of the art of monarchy—and the artists, historians, designers, gallerists, and critics who died in 2022

The artists Paula Rego and Sam Gilliam, the gallerist Virginia Dwan, the critic Peter Schjeldahl and the patron of the arts John Sainsbury were among the other influential figures lost to the art world this year

Maya Picasso, daughter of artist Pablo and important archivist of her father's legacy, has died, aged 87

Her relationship with her father is the subject of an ongoing exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Paris

Vincent Noce

Philip Pearlstein, whose nude portraits helped revive figurative painting, has died, aged 98

Pearlstein, a classmate of Andy Warhol’s who similarly worked against the grain of the dominant Abstract Expressionist style of the time, remained committed to representation from the late 1950s onward