The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Magdalena Jetelová, Gotthard Graubner, Nam June Paik, Nan Hoover, Katharina Fritsch, Tony Cragg, Ruth Rogers-Altmann, Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Rosemarie Trockel, Thomas Schütte, Katharina Grosse, Michael Krebber and photographers Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand, Christopher Williams, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer. In the stairway of its main entrance are engraved the Words: “Für unsere Studenten nur das Beste” (“For our Students only the Best”).
Early history
The school was founded by Lambert Krahe in 1762 as a school of drawing. The first female professor, Catharina Treu, was appointed in 1766. In 1773, it became the “Kurfürstlich-Pfälzische Academie der Maler, Bildhauer- und Baukunst” (Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the Electorate of the Palatinate). During the Napoleonic Wars, the count palatine’s art collection was inherited by the Wittelsbach family and moved to Munich, prompting the Prussian government—who had annexed the Düsseldorf region after Napoleon had surrendered—to change it into a Royal Arts Academy in Düsseldorf, in 1819.
In the 1850s, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf became internationally renowned, with many students coming from Scandinavia, Russia and the United States to learn, among other things, the genre and landscape painting associated with the Düsseldorf school.[1][2]
