| State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart | |
| Native Name: | Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart |
| Other Name: | ABK Stuttgart |
| Former Name: | Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart |
| Established: | 1761 |
| Type: | public |
| Country: | Germany |
| Coordinates: | 48.8002°N 9.1743°W |
| Students: | 900 |
| Rector: | Eva-Maria Seng |
The State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (de|Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, or ABK Stuttgart)[1] is a public fine art university in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1761 and has been located on the Weissenhof since 1946. Its campus consists of three buildings: the Altbau, Neubau 1 or "Architects' Building", and Neubau 2.
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, Micha Ullman, 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.[2] Under the rectorate of Wolfgang Kermer, on 22 February 1975, the ″Gesetz über die Kunsthochschulen im Lande Baden-Württemberg (Kunsthochschulgesetz)″[3] passed by the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg came into force, which for the first time in the history of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design regulated the status and the essential relationships and which guaranteed the equality of rank with universities.[4] ″The Stuttgart Academy", said Rector Wolfgang Kermer on the occasion of the ″State Art University Weeks 1981″ (Landeskunsthochschulwochen 1981) in Baden-Baden, ″sees its task and responsibility as a ′universitas artium′, whose - certainly high - standards must be to be part of the constantly changing art reality and at the same time to contribute to these changes.″[5]
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-of-the-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 (Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design), 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.[6] 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″).[7]
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.[8] 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 unknown), the only ones from the earlier, before 1945 extensive staff had been taken over into the newly constituted Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design, 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 Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design,[9] the effects of which were reflected in numerous newspapers until the early 1970s,[10] 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[11] 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 Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design has had its own art collection, founded by rector Wolfgang Kermer and comprising the works of current and former teachers as well as alumni.[12] This era created the foundation on which the Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design stands today.[13]
In the more than 250 years of her changeful history, prominent artists and teachers have marked the path of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art an Design, 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, Wolfgang Kermer, Alfred Hrdlicka, Heinz Edelmann, Richard Sapper, Joseph Kosuth, Micha Ullman, David Chipperfield, Joan Jonas, as well as prominent artists such as Heinrich Füger, 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.
List of rectors at ABK Stuttgart (since 1946):