State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe

At the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe students can pursue any of the following courses of study:

• Fine Arts: Painting / Graphic Arts and Sculpture, leading to the degree of Diplom
• Art Education at Gymnasium (German grammar school) Level, leading to the Staatsexamen degree – please note that this course is currently being phased out
• Bachelor of Fine Arts: Art Teaching in the Visual Arts
• Master of Education, Art Teaching in the Visual Arts – currently in the planning stage (projected to start in 2018)

The hallmark of studying at the Academy is that both students of the Fine Arts and students following a teacher training course in Art Teaching are taught in the same class-groups. The some 300 students enrolled at the Academy learn through creating their own art works, discussing the results with their instructors and openly seeking an exchange of ideas with their fellow students. Underlying this form of teaching is the belief that art can be successfully taught and studied only through the process of its conception and creation. Alongside these classes, the respective courses include wide-ranging studies in Art History and Art Theory and involvement in workshop activities. Fundamentally committed to the autonomy of art, the Academy consciously fosters forms of teaching that emerge from artistic questions and issue in artistic responses.

The State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe sees itself as a place where established artistic disciplines are put to the test and made to prove their relevance for the artist of today in the face of new developments. At the same time, however, the latest forms of expression are measured against the accomplishments of older traditions. This form of productive dialogue with media and genres is in keeping with our ideal of an art community in which both students and instructors are actively involved.

Our Academy owes its considerable reputation in no small part to its consciously chosen focus on the Fine Arts –painting, sculpture and drawing – which it openly champions as an ongoing creative process in constant dialogue with the ever-changing media. This unrelenting attention to central areas of artistic expression has not only proved its worth in the past and repeatedly led to border-transcending extensions of the artistic spectrum, but it also confirms the Academy’s current position as one of the foremost art colleges in all of Germany.