Wieland Schmied (5 February 1929 – 22 April 2014) was an Austrian
art historian
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
and critic, curator, literary scholar and writer. He was professor of
art history at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich since 1986 and its
rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
from 1988 until 1993. He was president of the
Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste from 1995 to 2004.
He was born in
Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1929,
the eldest son of the Austrian philosopher and his second wife. He grew up in Frankfurt am Main and Friedberg, before moving to
Vienna with his parents in 1939. Following the ''
Matura'' of his secondary schooling in
Mödling, he studied law at the
University of Vienna. He became an Austrian citizen in 1949.
As director of the
Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Schmied organized a total of 99 exhibitions, for whose exhibition catalogues he wrote numerous forewords and other contributions. In Berlin he curated many important international exhibitions on 20th century art. In 1977, he was responsible for the
drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...
s department at the
documenta 6 in
Kassel
Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...
,
and continued to head the department "
Neue Sachlichkeit und
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
us" at the 15th European Art Exhibition in Berlin. For the
Goethe Institute, with
Eberhard Kolb and , he curated an exhibition on visual art of the early
Weimar Republic.
Schmied died on 22 April 2014 in
Vorchdorf, Upper Austria.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmied, Wieland
1929 births
Austrian art historians
2014 deaths