Henri Matisse completes the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, with every detail designed by himself

US abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning exhibits his series Women nos I-VI, on which he has been working since 1938

A painting by Graham Sutherland, commissioned for Winston Churchill's 80th birthday, does not meet with the full approval of the sitter or his wife

Australian artist Arthur Boyd begins his series of paintings about an aboriginal stockman, Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste

British artist Anthony Caro begins welding and painting abstract metal sculpture

British artist Bridget Riley creates patterns that produce unexpected optical effects, in a style that becomes known as op art

Andy Warhol creates a stir when his paintings of Campbell's soup cans are exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles

Coventry's new cathedral is inaugurated, enhanced by a wide range of work by leading British artists

An exhibition in New York, 'The Responsive Eye', puts op art on the map

A Bigger Splash, by English painter David Hockney, casts a new light on sunlit swimming pools

Paintings discovered on stone slabs in a cave in Namibia are dated to about 28,000 years ago

British artist David Hockney paints a striking triple portrait in Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy

Leading New York Graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat dies of an overdose

Potholers discover the world's oldest known paintings in the Chauvet cave in southern France

Chris Ofili's painting The Holy Virgin is embellished with elephant dung

Mao Zedong inspires German artist Anselm Kiefer's Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom

David Hockney, in a major exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy, includes landscape paintings created on an iPad and displayed as prints

A pastel version of Edvard Munch's The Scream sells in Sotheby's New York for US $120 million, by far the record for any work of art