Deaths in 2021  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Current revision

La Calavera Catrina (before 1913) by José Guadalupe Posada

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• Russ Kick, 52, American writer, editor and publisher.
• Richard Rush, 91, American director (Psych-Out).
• Sabine Weiss, 97, Swiss-French photographer.
• Mikey Chung, 71, Jamaican musician and arranger, myeloma.
• E. O. Wilson, 92, American biologist (Sociobiology: The New Synthesis).
• Wayne Thiebaud, 101, American painter (Refrigerator Pies).
• Jean-Marc Vallée, 58, Canadian film and television director (Dallas Buyers Club).
• Joan Didion, 87, American writer (Run, River, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking).
• Antoine Faivre, 87, French literary scholar and occultist.
• Richard Rogers, 88, Italian-born British architect (Centre Pompidou).
• Eve Babitz, 78, American artist and author (Fiorucci: The Book).
• bell hooks, 69, American feminist author (Ain't I a Woman?).
• Joe Simon, 85, American soul and R&B singer ("The Chokin' Kind").
• Michael Nesmith, 78, American musician ("Mary, Mary").
• Anne Rice, 80, American author (Interview with the Vampire).
• Steve Bronski, 61, Scottish keyboardist (Bronski Beat).
• Robbie Shakespeare, 68, Jamaican bassist (Sly and Robbie, Black Uhuru) and record producer, complications from kidney surgery.
• Lina Wertmüller, 93, Italian film director (Seven Beauties, Love and Anarchy, Swept Away) and screenwriter.
• Greg Tate, 64, American music critic (The Village Voice) and musician (Burnt Sugar), co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition.
• John Miles, 72, British singer-songwriter and musician ("Music").
• Lawrence Weiner, 79, American conceptual artist.
• Alvin Lucier, 90, American composer (I Am Sitting in a Room).
• Peter Weiermair, 77, German art historian and curator (The Nude. Ideal and Reality).
• Vladimir Naumov, 93, Russian film director (Legend of Thiele), screenwriter and producer.
• David Gulpilil, 67–68, Australian actor (Walkabout).
• Almudena Grandes, 61, Spanish writer (The Ages of Lulu).
• Marilyn McLeod, 82, American singer-songwriter ("Love Hangover").
• Stephen Sondheim, 91, American composer and lyricist ("Send In the Clowns").
• Antonio Escohotado, 80, Spanish philosopher and writer (A Brief History of Drugs).
• Mick Rock, 72, British photographer.
• Jimmie Durham, 81, American sculptor and poet.
• John Goodsall, 68, American-British rock guitarist (Atomic Rooster, Brand X).
• Graeme Edge, 80, English drummer (The Moody Blues) and songwriter.
• Margo Guryan, 84, American singer-songwriter ("Sunday Mornin'").
• Dean Stockwell, 85, American actor (Blue Velvet).
• Evette Benton, 68, American soul ("Space Bass") and disco singer.
• Bob Baker, 82, British screenwriter (Wallace & Gromit).
• Ernest Wilson, 69, Jamaican reggae singer (The Clarendonians).
• Ronnie Wilson, 73, American R&B musician (The Gap Band).
• William Shelby, 65, American funk musician (Dynasty, Lakeside).
• George Butler, 78, British-American filmmaker (Pumping Iron, Pumping Iron II: The Women).
• Colin Powell, 84, American general and politician.
• Alan Hawkshaw, 84, British composer ("Here Comes That Sound Again") and keyboard player.
• Paddy Moloney, 83, Irish musician (The Chieftains) and producer.
• Lonnie Smith, 79, American jazz musician, pulmonary fibrosis.
• Olivier Libaux, 57, French record producer and musician (Nouvelle Vague).
• Alan Lancaster, 72, English rock bassist (Status Quo).
• Pee Wee Ellis, 80, American saxophonist, composer and arranger ("Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud").
• Melvin Van Peebles, 89, American film director, actor and playwright (Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Classified X).
• Richard H. Kirk, 65, English electronic musician (Cabaret Voltaire, Sweet Exorcist) and songwriter ("Yashar").
• Sylvano Bussotti, 89, Italian composer and poet (Five Piano Pieces for David Tudor ).
• Sir Clive Sinclair, 81, English entrepreneur and inventor (Sinclair C5).
• Carl Bean, 77, American singer ("I Was Born This Way") and LGBT activist.
• Jean-Paul Belmondo, 88, French actor (Breathless, That Man from Rio, Pierrot le Fou).
• Nino Castelnuovo, 84, Italian actor (Rocco and His Brothers, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Camille 2000).
• Alemayehu Eshete, 79–80, Ethiopian singer.
• Mikis Theodorakis, 96, Greek composer ("Mauthausen Trilogy", Zorba the Greek, Z).
• Lee "Scratch" Perry, 85, Jamaican composer, musician and record producer ("Chase the Devil", "Police and Thieves", "Bucky Skank").
• Brian Travers, 62, British saxophonist and songwriter (UB40).
• Jean-Luc Nancy, 81, French philosopher.
• Charlie Watts, 80, English Hall of Fame drummer (The Rolling Stones, Blues Incorporated).
• Sonny Chiba, 82, Japanese actor (Karate Kiba, Kill Bill: Volume 1) and martial artist.
• Chuck Close, 81, American painter (Big Self-Portrait).
• K. Schippers, 84, Dutch poet.
• Nanci Griffith, 68, American singer-songwriter ("It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go").
• Gianfranco D'Angelo, 84, Italian actor (Biancaneve & Co., Mondo candido).
• Piera Degli Esposti, 83, Italian actress (Il divo).
• R. Murray Schafer, 88, Canadian composer and writer.
• Dennis Thomas, 70, American saxophonist (founding member of Kool & the Gang).
• Jean "Binta" Breeze, 65, Jamaican dub poet.
• Paul Johnson, 50, American DJ ("Get Get Down") and record producer.
• Roberto Calasso, 80, Italian writer and publisher (Adelphi Edizioni).
• Jean-François Stévenin, 77, French actor (La philosophie dans le boudoir).
• Arnold Odermatt, Swiss photographer (b. 2021).
• Albert Bandura, 95, Canadian-American psychologist (Bobo doll experiment).
• Henri Vernes, 102, Belgian author (Bob Morane).
• Eddy Posthuma de Boer, 90, Dutch photographer.
• Françoise Arnoul, 90, French actress (Post Coitum, Animal Triste).
• Biz Markie, 57, American rapper ("Just a Friend").
• Kurt Westergaard, 86, Danish cartoonist (Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy).
• William F. Nolan, 93, American author (Logan's Run).
• Christian Boltanski, 76, French artist (People (Personnes)).
• Robert Downey Sr., 85, American film director (Putney Swope) and actor.
• Rick Laird, 80, Irish jazz fusion bassist (Mahavishnu Orchestra).
• Djivan Gasparyan, 92, Armenian musician and composer.
• Richard Lewontin, 92, American evolutionary biologist.
• Richard Donner, 91, American film director (Superman, The Goonies) and producer.
• Raffaella Carrà, 78, Italian singer ("A far l'amore comincia tu").
• Vladimir Menshov, 81, Soviet and Russian actor and film director.
• Donald Rumsfeld, 88, American politician, subject of the The Unknown Known.
• Louis Andriessen, 82, Dutch composer (De Staat).
• Frederic Rzewski, 83, American composer (The People United Will Never Be Defeated!) and pianist.
• Jon Hassell, 84, American trumpeter and composer.
• Ellen McIlwaine, 75, American-born Canadian guitarist and blues singer, cancer.
• John McAfee, 75, British-American computer programmer and businessman (antivirus software).
• Clare Peploe, 79, British-Italian film director and screenwriter (Zabriskie Point).
• Antonio Salines, 84, Italian actor (Monella, The Gamecock, Senso '45) and director.
• Gottfried Böhm, 101, German architect (Maria, Königin des Friedens) and sculptor.
• Ned Beatty, 83, American actor (Network, Deliverance).
• A.L. Snijders, 83, Dutch writer.
• Dani Karavan, 90, Israeli sculptor (Passages; Homage to Walter Benjamin).
• Benoît Sokal, 66, Belgian comics artist (Inspector Canardo).
• Eric Carle, 91, American writer and illustrator (The Very Hungry Caterpillar).
• Anna Halprin, 100, American choreographer.
• Roger Hawkins, 75, American drummer ("Love Sensation").
• Franco Battiato, 76, Italian singer-songwriter (Fetus, Pollution).
• Curtis Fuller, 86, American jazz trombonist.
• Karl Wirsum, 81, American artist.
• Jean-Claude Romer, 88, French actor, film critic and film historian.
• Ronald Inglehart, 86, American political scientist (Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world).
• Tawny Kitaen, 59, American actress (The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak).
• Willy Kurant, 87, Belgian cinematographer (Man on Horseback).
• George Jung, 78, American drug trafficker and smuggler, subject of Blow.
• Hafid Bouazza, 51, Moroccan-Dutch writer, cirrhosis.
• Anita Lane, 62, Australian singer-songwriter ("From Her to Eternity" and "Stranger Than Kindness").
• Tempest Storm, 93, American burlesque star (Teaserama).
• Monte Hellman, 91, American film director (Two-Lane Blacktop, Beast from Haunted Cave, The Shooting).
• Jim Steinman, 73, American musician, composer and lyricist ("Paradise by the Dashboard Light", "Total Eclipse of the Heart").
• Gene Youngblood, 78, American media theorist and writer (Expanded Cinema).
• Marshall Sahlins, 90, American anthropologist (Sahlins–Obeyesekere debate).
• Patrick Juvet, 70, Swiss model and singer-songwriter.
• Malcolm Cecil, 84, British musician (Tonto's Expanding Head Band, Blues Incorporated) and record producer (Talking Book).
• George Segal, 87, American actor (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).
• Jessica Walter, 80, American actress (Play Misty for Me).
• Bertrand Tavernier, 79, French film director (Coup de Torchon, Life and Nothing But) and screenwriter.
• Nawal El Saadawi, 89, Egyptian feminist and writer.
• Paul Jackson, 73, American jazz bassist (The Headhunters, Azteca, Santana).
• Antón García Abril, 87, Spanish composer (Tombs of the Blind Dead, Pancho Villa, Return of the Blind Dead).
• Norman J. Warren, 78, English film director (Satan's Slave, Prey, Terror).
• Barbara Ess, 73, American photographer and musician.
• Bunny Wailer, 73, Jamaican reggae singer-songwriter (Bob Marley and the Wailers), complications from a stroke.
• Chris Barber, 90, English jazz bandleader and trombonist ("Petite Fleur").
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 101, American poet (A Coney Island of the Mind).
• Françoise Cactus, 56, French musician (Stereo Total) and author.
• Tonton David, 53, French reggae singer.
• U-Roy, 78, Jamaican reggae singer.
• Johnny Pacheco, 85, Dominican musician (Fania All-Stars) and label executive (Fania Records), complications from pneumonia.
• Chick Corea, 79, American jazz keyboardist (Return to Forever) and songwriter ("Spain", "500 Miles High").
• Larry Flynt, 78, American publisher (Hustler).
• Ghédalia Tazartès, 73, French musician known for his guttural singing.
• Jean-Claude Carrière, 89, French novelist and screenwriter (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, The Unbearable Lightness of Being).
• Giuseppe Rotunno, 97, Italian cinematographer (All That Jazz, Amarcord, The Stendhal Syndrome).
• Christopher Plummer, 91, Canadian actor (The Sound of Music, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus).
• Sophie, 34, Scottish singer-songwriter and record producer.
• Hilton Valentine, 77, English Hall of Fame guitarist (The Animals).
• Cloris Leachman, 94, American actress (The Last Picture Show, Young Frankenstein).
• James Purify, 76, American soul singer ("I'm Your Puppet").
• Alberto Grimaldi, 95, Italian film producer (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Last Tango in Paris).
• Guem, 73, Algerian musician, composer and dancer.
• Larry King, 87, American broadcaster.
• Phil Spector, 81, American musician, record producer (Wall of Sound).
• Howard Johnson, 79, American jazz musician.
• Michael Apted, 79, English filmmaker (Up).
• Jim Haynes, 87, American-British underground and avant-garde theatre producer, co-founder of the Traverse Theatre and International Times.

See also

• Lists of deaths by year