From the beginnings to the present day: The Kunsthochschule Kassel in transition
The roots of the Kunsthochschule Kassel (KhK) reach back to the eighteenth century. On October 18, 1777 “L’Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture de Cassel” was opened to great fanfare by Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. Over the course of its nearly 250-year history the Kunsthochschule has undergone numerous transformations.
The structure of the academy today can be traced back to the 1970s, when two separate institutions, the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste and the Werkkunstschule, were merged under the direction of Jupp Ernst, creating the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HBK). On August 2, 1971 the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Kassel was then integrated into the Gesamthochschule Kassel. During this process, the fields of art, design, architecture, and visual communication were established as independent functional units.
In 1997 the Hessian Ministry for Sciences and the Arts and the Gesamthochschule Kassel decided to merge these departments, with the exception of the Department of Architecture, together with the departments of Art History and Aesthetics and Art Education to create the Kunsthochschule Kassel in its current form.
A number of figures can be selected to represent the wide variety of work at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and its predecessor institutions. As teachers or former students, they had a lasting impact on the development of art, design, and scholarship and have been recognized for their work both in Germany and internationally. These figures include Amalie Tischbein (1757–1839), who studied at the Kassel Kunstakademie as a painter, draftswoman, and miniaturist and who was named an honorary member in 1780, as well as Arnold Bode (1900–1977), student at the Kassel Kunstakademie and later teacher at the Werkkunstschule Kassel, who exerted a decisive influence on Kassel’s international reputation by founding the documenta.
Further examples of the great variety of artistic and design positions at the Hochschule include Günter Kupetz (1925–2018), professor and founder of the Industrial Design Program in Kassel, Hans Haacke (b. 1936), conceptual artist and pioneer in the field of institutional critique, as well as Floris Neusüss (1937–2020), professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and a significant figure in experimental photography. This spectrum is further widened by figures such as Dorothee von Windheim (b. 1945), who taught as a professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel from 1989 to 2010 and is considered one of leading figures in contemporary art, Gunter Demnig (b. 1947), graduate of the Kunsthochschule Kassel and initiator of the project “Stolpersteine,” as well as the Kunsthochschule graduate Lorenza Böttner (1959–1994), an internationally significant figure in performance and non-conformist art. Further international recognition for graduates trained at the Kunsthochschule is evidenced by the Oscar-winning short animation film “Balance” (1989) by Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein as well as “Quest” by Thomas Stellmach.
In 2027 Kunsthochschule Kassel will celebrate 250 years of its existence. This anniversary provides the opportunity to look back at the long history of the institution, appreciating its wide variety of developments and formative impulses in art, design, and scholarship, while at the same time looking ahead to the future development of the Kunsthochschule Kassel.