State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart

The State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (German: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart) is a university in Stuttgart, Germany. Founded on 25 June 1761, and located since 1946 on the Weißenhof, the Academy, whose historical significance marks names such as Nicolas Guibal, Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Bernhard Pankok, Adolf Hölzel, Willi Baumeister, Herbert Hirche, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Alfred Hrdlicka, Heinz Edelmann, Marianne Eigenheer, Richard Sapper, Joseph Kosuth, David Chipperfield, Joan Jonas, offers from all art universities in the federal state Baden-Württemberg the largest numbers of courses, namely all disciplines of the visual field, and not just in an organizational network but also under one roof. This is essentially the result of the connection of the former Academy of Fine Arts (''Württembergische Akademie der bildenden Künste'') with the former School of Applied Arts (''Württembergische Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule'') in 1941 as ''Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart'', which was reconstituted by Theodor Heuss in 1946 under the same name and which aimed at a broad training program as well as an intensified development in the following decades. Under the rectorate of Wolfgang Kermer, on 22 February 1975, the ″Gesetz über die Kunsthochschulen im Lande Baden-Württemberg (Kunsthochschulgesetz)″ passed by the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg came into force, which for the first time in the history of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart regulated the status and the essential relationships and which guaranteed the equality of rank with universities.

History

On 25 June 1761, Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, established in his New Palace located in the center of Stuttgart an ''Académie des Arts'', ″where youth can develop as young plants in a nursery″.

This institution, which also spent ten years in Ludwigsburg together with the ducal court, lost its attraction after a second educational institution founded by Charles Eugene, which gained in scope and importance and increasingly devoted itself to art education, so that the ''Académie des Arts'' last existed only by name. It was the ''Karlsschule'', an elite school with military education methodes, which went back to an orphanage founded in 1770 near Castle Solitude for poor soldiers' children and which moved in 1775 – after being converted into a military academy (''Militärakademie'') in 1773 – from the Castle Solitude in its own building (built according to the plans of the court architect Johann Christoph David Leger, destroyed in World War II), situated behind the New Palace in Stuttgart. In 1781 the ''Karlsschule'' was raised by Emperor Joseph II to university status under the name ''Karls Hohe Schule''.

At the local art department, whose lessons temporary were also attended by Friedrich Schiller, artists such as Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch, Joseph Anton Koch, Gottlieb Schick found their education with court painters such as Nicolas Guibal and Adolf Friedrich Harper, professors, who had already taught at the ''Académie des Arts''. Unique was the print workshop, founded in 1776 under the copper engraver Johann Gotthard von Müller.

After the death of Duke Charles Eugene (1793), the ''Hohe Karlsschule'' was disbanded in 1794 by his brother and successor Louis Eugene, Duke of Württemberg. Thus Württemberg lost its only state art training center.

After 35 years, in 1829, King William I of Württemberg founded an art school in Stuttgart, but initially in conjunction with other educational institutions (''Vereinigte Kunst-, Real- und Gewerbe-Schule''). From humble beginnings, separated in 1832 from the other institutions, the ″Royal art school″ (''Königliche Kunstschule'') gradually developed as a training center, which received under the direction of Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth in 1901 the title ″Royal academy of fine arts″ (''Königliche Akademie der bildenden Künste'', after 1918 ''Württembergische Akademie der bildenden Künste'').

Under the Nazi regime, in 1941, the academy was organically linked with the School of Applied Arts (''Württembergische Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule'', founded in Stuttgart in 1869) under the name ''Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart'' (State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart), with each institution retaining its previous location. After World War II, the institution maintained this name when it was reconstituted in 1946 from Theodor Heuss, the first Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs in the state of Württemberg-Baden, with free and applied disciplines. At that time, as her own buildings in downtown Stuttgart (''Urbanstraße 37/39'') had been destroyed during air raids in 1943 and 1944, the academy moved into the building of the former School of Applied Arts, built on the Weißenhof in 1913 under the direction of Bernhard Pankok. Already in 1906 Pankok had suggested the connexion of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal School of Applied Arts and her workshops (''Lehr- und Versuchswerkstätte'', founded in 1901). He had planned, more than ten years before the Bauhaus, an art school uniting all artistic disciplines on the Weißenhof area, but had found no resonance in Stuttgart. It was not until the winter semester of 1956/57 that the academy was extended for the first time on the Weißenhof area with the move into a newly built ″Sculptor′s building″ (″Bildhauerbau″).

In 1950 – you could study painting, glass painting, sculpture, free and applied graphics, interior and furniture design (″Innenarchitektur und Möbelbau"), textiles, ceramics, metal and art teaching – the following professors taught under the rectorate of the sculptor Hermann Brachert, who was involved with the reorganization of the academy: Trude Barth, Otto Baum, Willi Baumeister, Walter Brudi, Rudolf Daudert, Hans Fegers, Eugen Funk, Gerhard Gollwitzer, Peter Otto Heim, Manfred Henninger, Karl Hils, Eberhard Krauß, Hans Meid, Hugo Peters, Karl Rössing, Harmi Ruland, Hermann Sohn, Karl Hans Walter, Hans Warnecke, Kurt Wehlte, Hans Wentzel, Karl Wiehl, Rudolf Yelin. The architect Adolf G. Schneck, the typographer and calligrapher F. H. Ernst Schneidler (both NSDAP members, classified as Mitläufer in the denazification process) and the color chemist Hans Wagner (biographical data unkwon), the only ones from the earlier, before 1945 extensive staff had been taken over into the newly constituted State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, including the painter Fritz Steisslinger, who was active from 1946 – these four professors had already left the academy for various reasons before 1950.

After the Protests of 1968 at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, the effects of which were reflected in numerous newspapers until the early 1970s, after the justified criticism from the students for unclear legal relationships and the lack of study and examination regulations, protests against authoritarian professors, nepotism and membership in the Nazi Party, the university was fundamentally reformed under the rectorate of the art historian Wolfgang Kermer in 1975 and 1978 on the basis of new university laws for the art and music colleges of Baden-Württemberg. The legal status was clarified and guaranteed the equality of rank with universities. The academy decided on a new basic order, dissolved the old departmental structure and formed various specialist groups and study programs. In the 1970s also diplomas for all design courses were introduced and the promotion of talented students through state-funded exhibitions and publications was institutionalized. Since 1975, the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart has had its own art collection, founded by rector Wolfgang Kermer and comprising the works of current and former teachers as well as alumni. This era created the foundation on which the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart stands today.

In the more than 250 years of her changeful history, prominent artists and teachers have marked the path of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, from Nicolas Guibal, Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch, Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret, Bernhard von Neher, Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth, Carlos Grethe, Bernhard Pankok, Adolf Hölzel, Heinrich Altherr, Anton Kolig to Willi Baumeister, Herbert Hirche, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Alfred Hrdlicka, Heinz Edelmann, Richard Sapper, Joseph Kosuth, Micha Ullman, David Chipperfield, Joan Jonas, Karl Hofer, Willi Baumeister, Oskar Schlemmer, Hermann Stenner, Johannes Itten, Ida Kerkovius, Camille Graeser, HAP Grieshaber, Grete Stern, Frans Krajcberg, Charlotte Posenenske, Ludwig Wilding, Georg Karl Pfahler, Robert Gernhardt, Karin Sander, Michel Majerus are among their alumni.

Rectors (since 1946)

* 1946–1953 Hermann Brachert, sculptor
* 1953–1955 Karl Rössing, graphic artist
* 1955–1957 Manfred Henninger, painter
* 1957–1959 Rudolf Yelin (The Younger), glass painter
* 1959–1969 Walter Brudi, book artist and typographer
* 1969–1971 Herbert Hirche, architect, furniture and product designer
* 1971–1984 Wolfgang Kermer, art historian
* 1984–1987 Manfred Kröplien, graphic designer
* 1987–1991 Paul Uwe Dreyer, painter
* 1991–1994 Wolfgang Henning, architect
* 1994–1998 Klaus Lehmann, product designer
* 1998-2004 Paul Uwe Dreyer, painter
* 2004-2010 Ludger Hünnekens, archaeologist and cultural manager
* 2010–2016 Petra Olschowski, art historian and journalist
* 2017–2022 Barbara Bader, art scientist and art didactic

Prominent teachers

* Heinrich Altherr
* Heba Y. Amin
* Fritz Auer
* Willi Baumeister
* Johann Wilhelm Beyer
* David Chipperfield
* Johann Heinrich von Dannecker
* Christophe de la Fontaine
* Alexander Eckener
* Heinz Edelmann
* Marianne Eigenheer
* Reinhard Heinrich Ferdinand Fischer
* Rainer Ganahl
* Carlos Grethe
* Jakob Grünenwald
* Nicolas Guibal
* Adolf Friedrich Harper
* Robert von Haug
* Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch
* Herbert Hirche
* Adolf Hölzel
* Alfred Hrdlicka
* Christian Jankowski
* Joan Jonas