1950 in art

• Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer founds the Hundsgruppe ("dog pack") with Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs and Josef Mikl.
• Paint by number kits introduced by Max S. Klein, an engineer and owner of the Palmer Paint Company of Detroit, and Dan Robbins.
• Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art is published by Phaidon Press.

• Archibald Prize: William Dargie – Sir Leslie McConnan
• Audubon Artists Gold Medal – Richmond Barthé

• Jean Arp – Evocation of a Form: Human, Lunar, Spectral (model for bronze)
• Francis Bacon – Fragment of a Crucifixion
• Max Beckmann – Falling Man^[1]
• Marc Chagall – La Mariée
• Salvador Dalí – The Madonna of Port Lligat (second version, Fukuoka Art Museum)
• Max Desfor – Flight of Refugees Across Wrecked Bridge in Korea (photograph)
• Robert Doisneau – Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (The Kiss) (photograph)^[2]
• Alberto Giacometti – The Chariot
• E. Chambré Hardman – The Birth of the Ark Royal (photograph)
• Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi – Ghosts, Fire and Water (Yūrei, Hi and Mizu), first of The Hiroshima Panels (原爆の図, Genbaku no zu)
• Oskar Kokoschka – The Myth of Prometheus (triptych)
• L. S. Lowry – The Pond
• Henri Matisse – Beasts of the Sea (paper collage)
• Joan Mitchell - Figure and the City'^[3]
• Jackson Pollock – Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
• William Scott – Bowl, Eggs and Lemons
• Vladimir Tretchikoff – Chinese Girl, popularly known as "The Green Lady"
• Keith Vaughan – Theseus and the Minotaur (Tate Britain)

• April 22 – Thierry Zéno, Belgian filmmaker (d. 2017)
• June 24 – Bob Carlos Clarke, Irish photographer (d. 2006)
• July 28 – Neville Garrick, Jamaican graphic artist and photographer (d. 2023)
• July 29 – Jenny Holzer, American neo-conceptual artist
• August 30
  • Konrad Bernheimer, Venezuelan-born German art dealer and collector
  • Antony Gormley, English sculptor
• September 4 – Kobe (Jacques Saelens), Belgian visual artist and sculptor
• November 10 – Jonathan Janson, American painter and art historian
• December 11 – Aleksandr Tatarskiy, Russian animator, artist and film director (d. 2007)

(Specific date unknown)

• David Ruben Piqtoukun, Canadian Inuit sculptor
• Andrew Unangst. American photographer