Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden
Encyclopedia
The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (German
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden), often abbreviated HfBK Dresden or simply HfBK, is a vocational university
of visual arts
located in Dresden
, Germany
. The present institution is the product of a merger between the famous Dresden Art Academy, founded in 1764, the workplace and training ground of a number of influential European artists, and another well-established local art school, Hochschule für Werkkunst Dresden, after World War II
.
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One of three buildings of today’s Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, the former Royal Academy of Arts, built in 1894, is located at a prominent position in town on Brühl's Terrace
just next to the Frauenkirche
. Since 1991, the building built by Constantin Lipsius on Brühl's Terrace between 1887 and 1894 – the glass dome of which is also known as Lemon Squeezer due to its form – has been heavily renovated and the parts that were destroyed during World War II were reconstructed. The studios for painting/graphic arts/sculpture/other artistic media, the graphic workshops, the rector's office and the exhibition rooms of the Academy, which house the annual graduation exhibitions of the graduates, are located on Brühl's Terrace.
On the side of the building facing the Elbe
, the names of Pheidias, Iktinos
, Praxiteles
, Polykleitos
, Lysippos
, Erwin von Steinbach
, Leonardo da Vinci
, Michelangelo
, Raphael
and Dürer are inscribed on the wall and on the other side the motto "DEM VATERLAND ZU ZIER UND EHR" - "For the Honour and Adornment of the Fatherland" - is inscribed.
Apart from this magnificent building, the Academy owns the building for sculpture in Pfotenhauerstrasse, the studios and workshops of which were built in a big open-air exhibition ground in 1910. The workshops and studios for the courses of study of restoration, stage setting and costume design and the technical college degree course for theatre setting and costume design are located at Güntzstrasse in the buildings of the former Academy of Applied Arts.
. From 1768 to 1786 it was located in the Fürstenberg Palace. Its first director was the Frenchmen Charles Hutin. After the death of Hutin in 1776, Johann Eleazar Zeissig
, referred to as Schenau
, became alternating director of the Academy together with Giovanni Battista Casanova
.
The Academy was the successor institution of the first “Zeichen- und Malerschule” (School for Drawing and Painters) founded in 1680. It was one of the oldest academies of art in the German-speaking area. In 1950 the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Dresden (Dresden Academy of Fine Arts) was merged with the Staatliche Hochschule für Werkkunst (Public Academy of Applied Art) – the successor of the Königlich Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule (Royal Saxon School of Applied Art)– into today's "Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden” (Dresden Academy of Fine Arts).
The reorganisation of the Academy started in 1990 offered the chance for innovative and organic development of an academy with a long and successful history and distinct traditions. Well-known artists from the global world of art are teaching at the Academy. The different courses available for the study of painting and graphics as well as sculpture are very diverse. The classic cornerstones of artistic teaching at the Dresden Academy complemented and led to discourse and artistic exchange in the project class “New Media” and in a specialised course for comprehensive artistic works. The rules for study allow for changes within and between the specialized courses and for using the courses in the best possible way for one’s own artistic ambitions and projects.
degree. The degree course Kunsttechnologie, Konservierung und Restaurierung von Kunst- und Kulturgut (Art Technology, Preservation and Restoration of Artistic and Cultural Assets) is one of the oldest and most renowned education courses on university level in Germany. The degree course Bühnen- und Kostümbild (Stage Setting and Costume Design) and the technical college degree course Theaterausstattung (Theatre Setting and Costume Design) offer with their practical oriented integration of designing and realising disciplines conditions for work and study that are hard to find anywhere else.
The Laboratory Theatre in the Güntzstrasse completed in April 2000 which houses a well-equipped rehearsal and experimental stage room allows the Academy to provide the theatre courses as well with ideal teaching conditions in addition to the studios.
The new postgraduate course Kunst-Therapie (Art Therapy) that was established just a few years ago does only exist a second time at one other art academy in Germany. After their academy studies, artists and art teachers are given attractive new chances for qualification in the artistic-social field.
Currently Eberhard Bosslet
teaches sculpture and concepts of space.
and Adrian Zingg
made the Dresden Academy one of the most important art schools in Europe. Ernst Rietschel, Gottfried Semper
and Ludwig Richter consolidated the reputation of the academy, which experienced a further zenith around the turn of the century. Many other eminent artists and scholars closely associated with the history of the Academy include Giovanni Casanova, Caspar David Friedrich
, Oskar Kokoschka
and Otto Dix
who taught at the Dresden Academy and shaped its profile.
Other former artist professors are:
famous artist presidents:
Each year in early June the graduation ceremonies and annual exhibitions are held at the locations on the Brühl Terrace and at Pfotenhauerstrasse.
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden), often abbreviated HfBK Dresden or simply HfBK, is a vocational university
Vocational university
A vocational university is an institution of higher education and sometimes research, which provides both tertiary and sometimes quaternary education and grants academic degrees at all levels in a variety of subjects...
of visual arts
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
located in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The present institution is the product of a merger between the famous Dresden Art Academy, founded in 1764, the workplace and training ground of a number of influential European artists, and another well-established local art school, Hochschule für Werkkunst Dresden, after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Buildings
Brühl's Terrace
Brühl's Terrace is a historic architectural ensemble in Dresden, Germany. Nicknamed "The Balcony of Europe", the terrace stretches high above the shore of the river Elbe in a city which is quite large as measured by area relative to its half a million inhabitants...
just next to the Frauenkirche
Dresden Frauenkirche
The Dresden Frauenkirche is a Lutheran church in Dresden, eastern Germany.Built in the 18th century, the church was destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. It has been reconstructed as a landmark symbol of reconciliation between former warring enemies...
. Since 1991, the building built by Constantin Lipsius on Brühl's Terrace between 1887 and 1894 – the glass dome of which is also known as Lemon Squeezer due to its form – has been heavily renovated and the parts that were destroyed during World War II were reconstructed. The studios for painting/graphic arts/sculpture/other artistic media, the graphic workshops, the rector's office and the exhibition rooms of the Academy, which house the annual graduation exhibitions of the graduates, are located on Brühl's Terrace.
On the side of the building facing the Elbe
Elbe
The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...
, the names of Pheidias, Iktinos
Iktinos
Ictinus was an architect active in the mid 5th century BC. Ancient sources identify Ictinus and Callicrates as co-architects of the Parthenon....
, Praxiteles
Praxiteles
Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue...
, Polykleitos
Polykleitos
Polykleitos ; called the Elder, was a Greek sculptor in bronze of the fifth and the early 4th century BCE...
, Lysippos
Lysippos
Lysippos was a Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. Together with Scopas and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the three greatest sculptors of the Classical Greek era, bringing transition into the Hellenistic period. Problems confront the study of Lysippos because of the difficulty of...
, Erwin von Steinbach
Erwin von Steinbach
Erwin von Steinbach was a German architect, and was a central figure in the construction of Notre-Dame de Strasbourg.-Biography:...
, Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
and Dürer are inscribed on the wall and on the other side the motto "DEM VATERLAND ZU ZIER UND EHR" - "For the Honour and Adornment of the Fatherland" - is inscribed.
Apart from this magnificent building, the Academy owns the building for sculpture in Pfotenhauerstrasse, the studios and workshops of which were built in a big open-air exhibition ground in 1910. The workshops and studios for the courses of study of restoration, stage setting and costume design and the technical college degree course for theatre setting and costume design are located at Güntzstrasse in the buildings of the former Academy of Applied Arts.
Predecessors
In 1764, the “Allgemeine Kunst-Academie der Malerey, Bildhauer-Kunst, Kupferstecher- und Baukunst” (General Academy of Arts for Painting, Sculpture, Copperplate Engraving and Architecture) was founded by order of the Prince-Elector Frederick ChristianFrederick Christian
Frederick W. Christian was an English cricket player. He represented the gold medal winning Great Britain team at the 1900 Summer Olympics, the only time cricket has featured in the Olympics. In the only match against France, he was bowled for a duck in Great Britain's first innings and did not...
. From 1768 to 1786 it was located in the Fürstenberg Palace. Its first director was the Frenchmen Charles Hutin. After the death of Hutin in 1776, Johann Eleazar Zeissig
Johann Eleazar Zeissig
Johann Eleazar Zeissig, also known as Schenau , was a German genre, portrait and porcelain painter, and engraver; director of the Royal Academy of Arts in Dresden.-Life:...
, referred to as Schenau
Johann Eleazar Zeissig
Johann Eleazar Zeissig, also known as Schenau , was a German genre, portrait and porcelain painter, and engraver; director of the Royal Academy of Arts in Dresden.-Life:...
, became alternating director of the Academy together with Giovanni Battista Casanova
Giovanni Battista Casanova
Giovanni Battista Casanova was an Italian painter and printmaker of the Neoclassic period. He was a brother of Giacomo Casanova and Francesco Giuseppe Casanova and was born at Venice...
.
The Academy was the successor institution of the first “Zeichen- und Malerschule” (School for Drawing and Painters) founded in 1680. It was one of the oldest academies of art in the German-speaking area. In 1950 the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Dresden (Dresden Academy of Fine Arts) was merged with the Staatliche Hochschule für Werkkunst (Public Academy of Applied Art) – the successor of the Königlich Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule (Royal Saxon School of Applied Art)– into today's "Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden” (Dresden Academy of Fine Arts).
Features
Today it is one of the academies of art in Germany that are especially attractive for a degree in art due to their unmistakable profile and optimum general conditions. The students are provided with spacious studies und well equipped workshops. The possibilities for exhibitions at the Academy are excellent: The Academy is provided with presentation space in the octagon below the glass dome referred to as “Lemon Squeezer” that is a landmark in the town, and in the two big adjacent exhibition rooms as well as the former library and the “Galerie Brühlsche Terrasse” (Brühl’s Terrace Gallery) which may be used by students from all degree courses and co-operation partners of the Academy.The reorganisation of the Academy started in 1990 offered the chance for innovative and organic development of an academy with a long and successful history and distinct traditions. Well-known artists from the global world of art are teaching at the Academy. The different courses available for the study of painting and graphics as well as sculpture are very diverse. The classic cornerstones of artistic teaching at the Dresden Academy complemented and led to discourse and artistic exchange in the project class “New Media” and in a specialised course for comprehensive artistic works. The rules for study allow for changes within and between the specialized courses and for using the courses in the best possible way for one’s own artistic ambitions and projects.
Degree Courses
The degree course of Bildende Kunst (Fine Art) consists of 10 semesters and leads to the DiplomDiplom
A Diplom is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Estonia, Finland , Greece, Hungary, Russia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Ukraine...
degree. The degree course Kunsttechnologie, Konservierung und Restaurierung von Kunst- und Kulturgut (Art Technology, Preservation and Restoration of Artistic and Cultural Assets) is one of the oldest and most renowned education courses on university level in Germany. The degree course Bühnen- und Kostümbild (Stage Setting and Costume Design) and the technical college degree course Theaterausstattung (Theatre Setting and Costume Design) offer with their practical oriented integration of designing and realising disciplines conditions for work and study that are hard to find anywhere else.
The Laboratory Theatre in the Güntzstrasse completed in April 2000 which houses a well-equipped rehearsal and experimental stage room allows the Academy to provide the theatre courses as well with ideal teaching conditions in addition to the studios.
The new postgraduate course Kunst-Therapie (Art Therapy) that was established just a few years ago does only exist a second time at one other art academy in Germany. After their academy studies, artists and art teachers are given attractive new chances for qualification in the artistic-social field.
Currently Eberhard Bosslet
Eberhard Bosslet
Eberhard Bosslet is a German contemporary artist who has been producing site-specific art and architectural-related works, such as sculpture, installation and painting, both indoors and outdoors, since 1979...
teaches sculpture and concepts of space.
Former faculty members
One of its most illustrious teachers was Bernardo Belotto, the painter of the world-famous town scapes of Dresden. At the beginning of the 19th century, painters such as Anton GraffAnton Graff
Anton Graff was an eminent Swiss portrait artist. Among his famous subjects were Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Heinrich von Kleist, Frederick the Great, Johann Gottfried Herder and Christian Felix Weisse...
and Adrian Zingg
Adrian Zingg
Adrian Zingg was a Swiss painter.-References:*This article was initially translated from the German Wikipedia....
made the Dresden Academy one of the most important art schools in Europe. Ernst Rietschel, Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...
and Ludwig Richter consolidated the reputation of the academy, which experienced a further zenith around the turn of the century. Many other eminent artists and scholars closely associated with the history of the Academy include Giovanni Casanova, Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning...
, Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...
and Otto Dix
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.-Early life and...
who taught at the Dresden Academy and shaped its profile.
Other former artist professors are:
- Johan Christian DahlJohan Christian DahlJohan Christian Claussen Dahl , often known as was a Norwegian landscape painter, who was connected to the Norwegian romantic nationalism. He is often considered have been "the father of Norwegian landscape painting"....
- Constantin LipsiusConstantin LipsiusJohannes Wilhelm Constantin Lipsius was a German architect and architectural theorist, best known for his controversial design of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Exhibition Building on the Brühl Terrace in Dresden, today known as the Lipsius-Bau.After attending Gymnasium, Lipsius initially...
- Richard Müller
- Georg Hermann NicolaiGeorg Hermann NicolaiGeorg Hermann Nicolai was a German architect and educator, Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts on the Brühl Terrace in Dresden from 1850 until his death....
- Moritz RetzschMoritz RetzschFriedrich August Moritz Retzsch was a German painter, draughtsman, and etcher.Retzsch was born in the Saxon capital Dresden. He joined the Dresden Academy of Arts in 1798 under Cajetan Toscani and Józef Grassi, later working autodidactically, copying the famous pictures of the Gemäldegalerie,...
- Paul WallotPaul WallotPaul Wallot was a German architect of Huguenot descent, best known for designing the Reichstag building in Berlin, erected between 1884 and 1894...
famous artist presidents:
- Johannes HeisigJohannes HeisigJohannes Heisig is a German painter and graphic artist. His work combines the tradition of German socialist realism with a subjective expressionism...
(1989-91)
Alumni
- Ludwig Richter (1803–1884), painter and drawer of Romanticism
- Hans UngerHans UngerHans Unger was a German painter who was, during his lifetime, a highly respected Art Nouveau artist. His popularity did not survive the change in the artistic climate in Germany after World War I, however, and after his death he was soon forgotten...
(1872–1936), painter and drawer of Jugendstil - Otto MuellerOtto MuellerOtto Mueller or Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.-Life and work:...
(1874-1930), painter and lithographer of Expressionism - George GroszGeorge GroszGeorg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...
(1893–1959), drawer and painter - Conrad FelixmüllerConrad FelixmüllerConrad Felixmüller was a German Expressionist painter. Born in as Conrad Felix Müller, he chose Felixmüller as his nom d'artiste....
(1897–1977), painter of Expressionism and New Objectivity - Elfriede Lohse-WächtlerElfriede Lohse-WächtlerElfriede Lohse Wächtler was a German painter of the avant-garde whose works were banned as "degenerate art", and in some cases destroyed, by the Third Reich. She was killed in a former psychiatric institution at Sonnenstein castle in Pirna under Action T4, a forced euthanasia program of Nazi Germany...
(1899-1940), painter and graphic artist - Eberhard HavekostEberhard HavekostEberhard Havekost is a contemporary German painter based in Berlin and Dresden. In 1985 he completed an internship as a stonemason. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden from 1991-1996, where he became a master student under Professor Ralf Kerbach in 1997...
(born 1967), painter - Carl Gustav CarusCarl Gustav CarusCarl Gustav Carus was a German physiologist and painter, born at Leipzig.A friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he was a many-sided man: a doctor, a naturalist, a scientist and a psychologist and an advocate of the theory that health of body and mind depends on the equipoise of antagonistic...
- Kurt SchwittersKurt SchwittersKurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
- Gerhard RichterGerhard RichterGerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style.- Biography :Gerhard Richter was born in...
- Sascha SchneiderSascha SchneiderRudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider , was a German painter and sculptor.-Biography :...
- Michael Iliadis (born 1979), painter
Locations
The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts is located at three places along the Elbe river:- Brühlsche Terrasse 1, Dresden-Altstadt
- Güntzstraße 34, Dresden
- Pfotenhauerstrasse 81/83, Dresden-Johannstadt
Each year in early June the graduation ceremonies and annual exhibitions are held at the locations on the Brühl Terrace and at Pfotenhauerstrasse.