Art Competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics

There was no art catalogue printed for the 1924 Paris Games. The single information available is the Official Report of the Paris Games, listing only the competitors with their works and the medal winners. As in 1920 there were five art categories without any further divisions: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. In all 193 artists from 24 countries exhibited in these five categories. The exhibition took place in the Grand Palais and was held by the Société National des Beaux-Arts. Five juries were installed for the five categories consisting of more than 20 members in each. The works had to be inspired by sport-related themes.

The contests were taken seriously for the first time, as the number of submitted works shows. Remarkably, the participants included three artists from the Soviet Union, even though this country officially did not take part in the Olympic Games, which they considered to be a “bourgeois” festival.