Wassily Kandinsky takes up a teaching post at the Bauhaus in Weimar

Diego Rivera, returning from his study of Italian frescoes, begins the first of his influential murals depicting Mexican history

Four Scottish Colourists (Cadell, Fergusson, Hunter, Peploe) exhibit together in Paris

House by the Railroad, by US painter Edward Hopper, introduces a new style of urban realism

Stanley Spencer completes his large visionary canvas The Resurrection: Cookham

The Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte has his first one-man show, at the Galerie Centaure in Brussels

Stanley Spencer begins his murals in the Memorial Chapel for Henry Sandham at Burghclere, in Hampshire

In his painting The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dali provides the disturbing image of watches drooping from the edge of flat surfaces

The British artist Graham Sutherland, after an early career as a printmaker, takes up painting relatively late in life

British painter Francis Bacon has his first solo show in London

A Nazi exhibition of 'degenerate art' opens in Munich, and visitors are invited to mock the avant-garde works on show

Pablo Picasso's massive painting Guernica is exhibited in the Spanish pavilion at the World Fair in Paris

William Coldstream and Victor Pasmore open a school of art with a distinctive style, known from its location as the Euston Road School

Stanley Spencer gives a stark depiction of himself and his wife in The Leg of Mutton Nude

Leading British artists Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson marry

The Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira wins success with the first exhibition of his watercolours

American naïve painter Grandma Moses has her first exhibition in a local drug store at the age of 78

Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson move their studios to St Ives

Schoolboys, out hunting, discover paintings in a cave at Lascaux after their dog falls into a hole

English painter Francis Bacon creates a sensation with his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

Sadler's Wells Ballet moves to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (and is known from 1956 as the Royal Ballet)

A new style of American painting, involving artists such as Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, is given the name Abstract Expressionism

Australian painter Sidney Nolan begins a series of paintings on the theme of Ned Kelly

US artist Jackson Pollock's drip paintings cause a stir in New York

In Christ of St John of the Cross Salvador Dali paints an image of the crucified Christ seeming to fly on his cross