Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

About

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (German: Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien) is a public art school in Vienna, Austria. Founded in 1688 as a private academy, it is now a public university with more than 1,500 students and six institutes. Its main building on Vienna’s Schillerplatz near the Ringstraße boulevard was planned by Theophil Hansen and inaugurated in 1877. The academy houses an expansive art collection that includes the Last Judgement Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch and is open to the public.

The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna was founded in 1688 as a private academy modelled on the Accademia di San Luca and the Parisian Académie de peinture et de sculpture by the court-painter Peter Strudel, who became the Praefectus Academiae Nostrae. In 1701, he was ennobled by Emperor Joseph I as Freiherr (Baron) of the Empire. With his death in 1714, the academy temporarily closed.

On 20 January 1725, Emperor Charles VI appointed the Frenchman Jacob van Schuppen as Prefect and Director of the academy, which was refounded as the k.k. Hofakademie der Maler, Bildhauer und Baukunst (Imperial and Royal Court Academy of painters, sculptors and architecture). Upon Charles's death in 1740, the academy at first declined, however during the rule of his daughter Empress Maria Theresa, a new statute reformed the academy in 1751. The prestige of the academy grew during the deanships of Michelangelo Unterberger and Paul Troger, and in 1767 the archduchesses Maria Anna and Maria Carolina were made the first Honorary Members. In 1772, there were further reforms to the organisational structure. In 1776, the engraver Jakob Matthias Schmutzer founded a school of engraving. This Imperial-Royal Academy of Engraving in the Annagasse soon competed with the Court Academy.

Chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz integrated all existing art academies into the k.k. Akademie der vereinigten bildenden Künste (Imperial and Royal Academy of Unified Fine Arts). The word "vereinigten" (unified) was later dropped. In 1822 the art cabinet grew significantly with the bequest of honorary member Anton Franz de Paula Graf Lamberg-Sprinzenstein. His collection still forms the backbone of the art on display.

In 1872, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria approved a statute making the academy the supreme government authority for the arts. A new building was constructed according to plans designed by Theophil Hansen in the course of the layout of the Ringstraße boulevard. On 3 April 1877, the present-day building on Schillerplatz in the Innere Stadt district was inaugurated, the interior works, including ceiling frescos by Anselm Feuerbach, continued until completion in 1892.

In 1907 and 1908, young Adolf Hitler, who had come from Linz, was twice denied admission to the drawing class by academy professor Christian Griepenkerl.

During the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945, the academy, like other Austrian universities, was forced to purge its staff and student body of Jews and others who fell under the purview of the racially discriminatory Nuremberg Laws. After World War II, the academy was reconstituted in 1955 and its autonomy reconfirmed. Eduard von Josch, the secretary of the academy, was dismissed for being a member of the Nazi Party. Women were officially admitted to study at the academy for the first time in the winter semester of 1920/1921. Before that, there had already been a few female students in the 18th and early 19th century, but not after 1820. In 1947, Gerda Matejka-Felden was appointed as the first female professor in the academy’s history. The academy has had university status since 1998, but retained its original name. It is currently the only Austrian university without the word "university" in its name.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.