Obituaries

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

Remembering Peter Schjeldahl: indispensable critic, poet, and lyrical observer of the embodied experience of art

His direct and personal style made him a well-respected chronicler of the US art scene for over 50 years

Matthew Holman

Artist Ashley Bickerton, who imagined new ways to lampoon and critique consumerism, has died, aged 63

The Indonesia-based artist, who rose to prominence in New York in the 1980s alongside Jeff Koons and Peter Halley, was diagnosed with ALS last year

Justin Kamp

British artist-polymath Tom Phillips—portrait painter, composer and poet—has died, aged 85

Phillips's masterpiece is A Humument, a 50-year recreation, redrawing and rewriting of a long-forgotten Victorian novel, that informed the artist's wider output, including an opera and his translation of Dante's Inferno

Dagny Corcoran, an influential art book dealer in Los Angeles, has died, aged 77

Her bookstore Art Catalogues, which she founded in 1977 and is still in operation, has long been a gathering place for the Los Angeles art community

Lee Bontecou—artist known for haunting, ominous wall sculptures made from industrial materials—has died, aged 91

The artist, who rose to prominence in the New York art scene of the 1970s, remained committed to an unclassifiable and otherworldly aesthetic

Obituariesfeature

In memoriam: London art dealer and restaurateur Andrew Edmunds represented a special and vivid chapter in Soho’s history

The world expert on the prints of William Hogarth, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson was a great and colourful character

Norman Rosenthal

Laila Shawa—a revolutionary Palestinian artist who found international fame—has died, aged 82

The artist and activist, described as the ‘mother of Arabic revolutionary art’ has work in the collections of the British Museum and the Ashmolean

Hadani Ditmars

Pierre Soulages, who found infinite possibility in black abstract paintings, has died, aged 102

The celebrated French artist remained committed to his singular formal pursuit for decades

Vincent Noce

Rodney Graham, influential Canadian conceptual artist with a wry sense of humour, has died, aged 73

After coming up among the Vancouver School’s photo-conceptualists, Graham struck out on his own singular, irreverent pursuits

Benjamin Sutton

Peter Schjeldahl, the revered art critic for the New Yorker, has died, aged 80

Following stints at Art News and the Village Voice, and as a poet, Schjeldahl joined the New Yorker in 1998, becoming one of the most influential art critics of his generation

Billy Al Bengston, painter who epitomised the visual lexicon of California culture, has died, aged 88

The artist was best-known for his abstract lacquered works and played a key role in the development of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s

Art on Locationnews

Remembering Virginia Dwan: champion of land artists and the US's first bicoastal gallerist

Hugely influential art dealer whose galleries in Los Angeles and New York launched Minimalism and Land Art in the US

Charles Darwent

Dimitrios Pandermalis, director and curator of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, has died, aged 82

Pandermalis, a revered archaeologist and professor, had also been outspoken in calling for the reunification of all the Parthenon marbles in Athens

Helen Stoilas

Obituariesfeature

Remembering Claes Oldenburg: reluctant Pop Art pioneer and maker of outsize sculptures

The artist denied that his huge sculptures of everyday objects were Pop Art, insisting he was not trying to make a comment consumerism or capitalism with them

David D'Arcy

William Klein, photographer who captured the bustle of New York City and brought high fashion into the streets, has died, aged 96

Klein, a native New Yorker, moved to Paris in the Second World War’s aftermath and forged an oeuvre spanning photography, film and painting

Justin Kamp

Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)feature

Remembering Queen Elizabeth II, the British sovereign who perfected the fine art of monarchy

Over seven decades, the monarch used ceremonial, media and heritage to project soft power around the globe

Obituariesfeature

Remembering Michael Archer, member of a golden age of curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum, who has died, aged 85

For more than 20 years, Archer enriched the ceramics department of the V&A with important acquisitions and research on glass, pottery and the tin-glazed earthenware on which he was a world authority

Simon Swynfen Jervis

Remembering Raymond Briggs: pioneering illustrator and creator of beloved book The Snowman

Briggs used his charming, low-tech visual style to devastating emotional effect in his adult, anti-war books as much as in his beloved children's tales and their film adaptations

Russian artist Dmitry Vrubel, who created famous Brezhnev-Honecker kiss mural on Berlin Wall, has died aged 62

The dissident painter suffered heart failure while being treated for Covid-19 in Germany

George Nelson

Issey Miyake, ground-breaking Japanese fashion designer and favourite of museum costume institutes, has died, aged 84

After surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a child, Miyake turned to clothes as a modern, optimistic form of creativity, and revived the use of pleats to create wearable, free-flowing, unisex clothes