Events from the year 1953 in art.

• November – New building for Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, the first major commission for Louis Kahn, opens.
• Anthony Blunt's Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700 is published.
• Yves Klein becomes a master at judo, receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan/degree black-belt) from the Kodokan in Japan.

• Archibald Prize: Ivor Hele – Sir Henry Simpson Newland, CBE, DSO, MS, FRCS

• Hans Arp – Cloud Shepherd (sculpture, University City of Caracas)
• Francis Bacon
  • Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
  • Two Figures (1953)
• John Brack
  • Men's Wear
  • The New House
• Alberto Burri - Rosso Gobbo^[1]
• Alexander Calder – Acoustic Clouds (installation, University City of Caracas)
• José Manuel Capuletti - Dama en la Playa^[2]
• Edwin Dickinson – Ruin at Daphne (begun 1943; Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Dong Xiwen – The Founding Ceremony of the Nation (original version)
• Jacob Epstein – Social Consciousness (sculpture group, Philadelphia)
• M. C. Escher – Relativity (lithograph)
• Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph (sculpture)
• Edward Hopper – Office in a Small City (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Willem de Kooning – Woman III
• L. S. Lowry
  • Football Ground (Going to the Match)
  • Industrial Landscape
  • The Procession passing the Queen Victoria Memorial, Coronation
• René Magritte – Golconda
• Marino Marini – Horse and Rider (bronze)
• Henri Matisse – The Snail (colored paper collage)
• Roberto Matta – Cercle du Blé (Circle of Wheat) (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
• Milton Menasco – 'La Troienne' and Her Foals: Eighteen Vignettes and One Painting Together in One Frame for John Whitney
• Henry Moore – Draped Reclining Figure (bronze)
• Alexander Phimister Proctor – John McLoughlin (bronze)
• Jackson Pollock – Portrait and a Dream
• Larry Rivers – Washington Crossing the Delaware
• Mark Rothko – No. 61 (Rust and Blue)
• Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov – In the Sun
• Charles Sheeler – Ore Into Iron (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

• October – Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings are exhibited at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in New York City.

• January 7 – Robert Longo, American painter and sculptor
• January 9 – Javad Alizadeh, Iranian cartoonist and painter
• February 25 – Martin Kippenberger, German artist (d. 1997)
• April 24 – Eric Bogosian, American performance artist
• May 18 – Helen Chadwick, English conceptual artist (d. 1996)
• September 12 – Stephen Sprouse, American fashion designer and artist (d. 2004)
• Full date unknown
  • Steven Campbell, Scottish figurative painter (d. 2007)
  • Michael Kenna, English landscape photographer
  • Kevin O'Neill, English comic book illustrator
  • Marjetica Potrč, Slovenian artist and architect

• February 1 – Archibald Nicoll, New Zealand painter (b. 1886)^[3]
• February 12 – Uroš Predić, Serbian Realist painter (b. 1857)
• March 23 – Raoul Dufy, French Fauvist painter (b. 1877)
• March 26 – Đorđe Jovanović, Serbian sculptor (b. 1861)
• April 15 – Charles R. Knight, American animal painter (b. 1874)
• April 29
  • Moïse Kisling, Polish-born painter (b. 1891)
  • Alice Prin ("Kiki de Montparnasse"), French artist, model and entertainer (b. 1901)
• June 23 – Albert Gleizes, French painter (b. 1881)
• September 13 – Mary Brewster Hazelton, American portrait painter (b. 1868)
• September 26 – Xu Beihong, Chinese painter (b. 1895)
• October 2 – John Marin, American modernist painter (b. 1870)
• October 6 – Vera Mukhina, Latvian-born Soviet sculptor (b. 1889)
• October 11 – James Earle Fraser, American sculptor (b. 1876)
• October 21 – Sir Muirhead Bone, British etcher (b. 1876)
• November 30 – Francis Picabia, French painter and poet (b. 1879)
• date unknown – J. Laurie Wallace, Irish American painter (b.1864)

• 1953 in fine arts of the Soviet Union