Obituaries

Vito Acconci, Body Art trailblazer, poet and architect, has died, aged 77

“Once someone said conceptual art I thought, maybe I can do that, I have ideas, there’s a place for me,” the artist said in an interview

'Critics say Pop artists love their subject matter. Bullshit!' Remembering James Rosenquist

Pop artist, who has died aged 83, told us ahead of his 2003 Guggenheim retrospective about subverting New York billboards as a young man

Paolo Viti

The many cultural initiatives of Olivetti’s and Fiat’s arts director

David Rockefeller, banker, philanthropist and lifetime MoMA patron, dies at age 101

The former chairman’s ties to the institution reach back to his mother Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who helped found the museum

Howard Hodgkin dies aged 84

British painter, described as one of the greatest colourists of his generation, won the Turner Prize in 1985 and exhibited widely including at the Met and Reina Sofia

Spencer Hays, who donated his collection to the Musée d’Orsay, has died

The philanthropist and businessman began collecting works with his wife Marlene in the 1970s

Gustav Metzger, auto-destructive art trailblazer, has died aged 90

Lifelong activist was “one of the truly radical artists of the 20th century”, says Hans Ulrich Obrist

Paul Walter, the voracious New York collector, connoisseur and bon vivant pioneered photography collecting, has died

He was able to focus on the rare and the unique, and this was something the others learned from

China mourns sudden death of provocative photographer Ren Hang

Artist's colourful nude photographs have been widely shown across Asia, Europe and the US

Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis has died, aged 80

The sculptor was known for his use of lowly materials like coal, jute bags and piles of stones

Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller, museum founder and collector who opposed the return of artefacts to their countries of origin

When he saw an object he liked, he would never let it go. Sometimes he waited years to acquire some of them

Saloua Raouda Choucair, pioneering Lebanese artist, dies aged 100

Tate Modern’s show in 2013 brought her abstract sculptures and paintings to a much wider audience

Lord Snowdon, photographer of British high society, dies aged 86

Princess Margaret's former husband worked for Vogue and his pictures were shown at the National Portrait Gallery

John Berger, the author of Ways of Seeing, has died aged 90

Art critic, who hated being called an art critic, will be best remembered for influential television series turned bestseller<br>

Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, ‘gentleman collector’ of ethnographic art, has died aged 86

Together with his wife Monique Mueller, the Swiss collector built one of the largest private holdings of Pre-Columbian, African and Oceanic objects in Europe

Giles Waterfield: Novelist, scholar and champion of struggling museums and the stately homes of England

Satirical material was visited upon him and he responded with more thought to entertaining his audience than to doing justice to his achievements

Giles Waterfield, the director who modernised Dulwich Picture Gallery, has died

Art historian, independent curator and lecturer, he wrote eruditely and amusingly about museums

Dario Fo: the life and death of an ideological jester, whose plays lampooned inequality and corruption

Fo spent his life whipping up jolly storms, claiming “freedom of opinion and happiness of existence through rage and laughter”

Berlin-based Syrian artist Marwan dies aged 82

Painter who created “face landscapes” has works in major public collections around the world

Christoph Graf Douglas, an urbane, aristocratic dealer and cultural diplomat

He was closely involved in noble houses’ restitution claims after German reunification

Hassan Sharif, the godfather of conceptual art in the Gulf, has died

Emirati who created constructivist drawings and performance pieces in the desert was “probably the greatest artist from the UAE”<br>

Marc Riboud, the photographer who wanted to picture life 'as intensely as possible'

The photographer did not believe photography could change the world—but it could reveal its changes

Renata and Michal Hornstein

The philanthropist couple, who escaped the Nazis in Poland, enriched Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts

Sixth Duke of Westminster leaves one of the most important Old Master collections in the UK

Many of the works owned by Gerald Grosvenor, who has died aged 64, have been loaned over the years to a small museum near the family seat in Chester <br>

Ernst Neizvestny—sculptor who stood up to Khrushchev’s criticism—has died, aged 91

Although the Soviet leader once called his work “degenerate”, the artist was asked to design his tombstone