Art Academy (Dresden)
The art academy , actually the Lipsiusbau (also: Lipsius-Bau ), is a university and exhibition building in Dresden . It is the seat of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HfBK) Dresden . The building on the Brühlsche Terrasse was built from 1887 to 1894 according to plans by the architect Constantin Lipsius in the style of historicism, mainly for the Royal Academy of Art , a predecessor institution of this university, which is why the name of the Academy of Art became natural for the entire building.
A smaller part of the Lipsius Building was an exhibition area of the Saxon Art Association until it was largely destroyed in the air raids on Dresden in 1945 and has served the Dresden State Art Collections as an art hall in the Lipsius Building since its reopening in 2005 . The Dresden vernacular describes the building's glass dome, crowned by a Fama figure, under which there is also an exhibition room, after its shape as a lemon squeezer .
The lavish sculptural decoration, in particular of the north facade of the building, which faces the Elbe, is unusual, with numerous sandstone reliefs and partly gilded figures. They show motifs from European art and cultural history, starting with ancient Greek mythology through to early modern masters. It is also the exterior design that can be viewed at all times; the interior of the university with its studios and workshops is only accessible to visitors during exhibitions and other events.
location
The art academy is located in the northeast of the inner old town and is one of the defining buildings on the Old Town bank of the Elbe. It is located between the Brühlsche Terrasse , the balcony of Europe , in the north, the Georg-Treu-Platz in the east, the An der Frauenkirche square in the south and the Münzgasse in the west. Neighboring are the Terrassenufer with the berths of the Sächsische Dampfschiffahrt in the north, the Brühlsche Garten in the east, the Albertinum with the New Masters Gallery and the Dresden Sculpture Collection in the southeast, the Coselpalais in the south, the baroque Frauenkirche in the southwest, residential and commercial buildings along the Münzgasse and the secondary school in the west.
Building description
The art academy is a monumental building with several wings and a very differentiated, complex appearance. As a remarkable example of historicism at the end of the 19th century, it represents a stylistic conglomerate of neo-renaissance , neo-baroque and French mannerism . Particularly striking are the lavishly decorated main facade on the Brühl terrace and the glazed dome.
The central part of the building is a four-wing complex that encloses an inner courtyard of around 1070 m² around which studios and classrooms are grouped. The symmetrical main facade of the north wing facing Brühl's Terrace is divided into two normal floors and eleven axes. The windows there take up a large area, corresponding to the use of the rooms behind as spacious painting studios. Pilasters structure the wall surfaces between them. A cranked cornice forms the top.
In the middle risalit , the central axis crowned by a smaller glass dome , the Corinthian double columns standing in colossal order on high pedestals flank the main portal. The two outer axes are designed as three-storey corner projections adorned by attached Corinthian double columns and mark the points at which the two transverse wings connect to the rear. The transverse wings lead from the northern to the structurally strongly structured southern wing, which is in the immediate vicinity of the Frauenkirche. A pavilion - like semicircular part of the building with a flattened dome protrudes from its headquarters , in which the anatomy room is located today.
The transverse and all other wings of the building that do not border the elevated Brühl Terrace have a basement . The neighboring houses on the south side of Terrassengasse are directly connected to the western transverse wing in a row construction. The row houses continue on Münzgasse to An der Frauenkirche square. This means that the west side of the art academy cannot be seen from the street. Until 1945, the row houses also connected to the south wing, which is why its western end is a simple plastered gable wall.
Another essential part of the building adjoins the four-wing complex in the east with the art gallery in the Lipsius building - albeit offset by about 45 degrees. This is due to urban planning, because the Dresden fortifications at the Jungfernbastei bend to the southeast at this angle and the front of this part of the building should also align with them. This north-eastern front is designed in the form of a portico with a vestibule. Four pairs of Corinthian columns support a triangular flat gable . The southeast facade is two-story in the neo-renaissance style.
Where the south wing, the east transverse wing and the wing with the Kunsthalle meet, the octagonal Oktogon exhibition hall is located in a cleverly mediating, articulated pavilion . Exactly above it is the characteristic main dome with its folded glass roof (colloquially known as the lemon squeezer because of its shape ), which is considered the university's landmark. A triangular inner courtyard is enclosed between the east transverse wing, the wing with the art gallery and a connecting building that continues the north wing to the east to the art gallery and where the architecture hall was located in a round pavilion crowned by a small dome. In a westerly direction, the northern wing of the building continues in the directly adjoining elongated painting room, which today serves as a gallery .
Facade decoration
The art academy is characterized by an extremely rich decoration of its facades with ornamental pictures and plastic jewelry. Most of the Dresden sculptures participated in the design. The works of the academy professors Johannes Schilling and Robert Henze are particularly outstanding . Other professors such as Heinrich Epler and Hermann Hultzsch also participated. The basic feature of the facade is the creative use of different types of Elbe sandstone . While the base and the figures are made of the darker Postaer sandstone , the wall surfaces and window frames made of the lighter Cottaer sandstone are different from it.
On the attic of the central risalit of the north facade on Brühl's Terrace, the viewer can see from left to right the almost three meter high allegories of architecture and sculpture , each created by Ernst Hähnel , and painting and engraving , created by Carl Röder . As a variation of this theme, sitting beneath them are four winged putti created by Richard Schnauder , which take measurements, chisel, paint or draw. A heraldic cartouche with a golden crown closes the central axis at the top.
A sandstone band with vegetative elements and those of artistic creation frames the main portal below. On the left above the entrance door, classical antiquity is depicted with a small Zeus statue in the right hand and a laurel wreath in the left hand. Its counterpart on the opposite side embodies the Christian art and the modern era , especially the Renaissance , and has a palm frond in his right arm and a face in the left, where the Sistine Madonna can be seen - Raphael's famous, in Dresden's Old Art Gallery Master issued Plant. In between, at the top of the portal, there is a relief of the personified genius of art.
The iconographic program on the north facade continues on both sides of the central risalit: to the east - from the viewer on the left - with themes from antiquity and to the west - from the viewer on the right - with themes from the early modern period, in individual cases also from the late Middle Ages . The names of important artists can be read in gilded letters above the upper window sills on the north facade. Starting at the eastern corner projecting with the sculptor Pheidias , it continues from left to right with other ancient Greeks: with the architect Iktinos and the sculptors Praxiteles , Polykleitos and Lysippos . The central elevation was followed by important artists of the early modern era: Erwin von Steinbach , Lionardo , Michelangelo , Raffael and, already on the western corner elevation , Duerer .
In the upper part of the corner projections there is further decoration of the facade: Homer's portrait head sits in the apex of the upper window of the eastern corner projecting . The ancient poet is flanked by the primordial goddess and personified earth Gaia and the sea god Poseidon . Gaia holds a cornucopia in her hand, and in front of her is a cow as an ancient symbol of fertility. Poseidon holds a trident and there is a fish at his feet. Homer's counterpart on the western corner risalit is the Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri , who at the beginning of the 14th century created one of the greatest works in world literature with the Divine Comedy, which revolves around heaven and hell . Accordingly, Dante's head is flanked by an angel-like female figure floating above a crescent moon as an allegory of heaven and a winged Satan with snakes as an allegory of hell. The figures on both risalits can also be interpreted as the four elements earth (Gaia), water (Poseidon), air (heavenly allegory) and fire (hellish allegory), which can also span an arc from antiquity to modern times.
Three figures are embossed and gilded in copper based on a design by Robert Henze. The best known of them is the 4.8 meter high and 1.7 ton heavy Fama (Pheme) on the top of the lemon squeezer . Hermann Heinrich Howaldt from Braunschweig began the execution, during which he died in 1891 by falling from the scaffolding, and Paul Rinckleben from Dresden completed the work in 1893. The fama's laurel wreath embodies the fame of the artist. Eros , the god of love, is located on the eastern corner projection of the north facade . Its counterpart on the western corner plan is Phantasos , a god of dreams. There are also ten relief medallions attached to the building , for example by Bramante , Holbein , Pöppelmann and Rubens as well as by Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , Lessing , Goethe and Schiller .
In addition to those on the central risalit, other putti can be seen on the north facade by Otto Panzner , August Herzig , Hans Hartmann-MacLean and Friedrich Offermann : on the one hand, four children's figures on the cornice of the round pavilion in the connecting building between the north wing and the art gallery. They refer to different architectural epochs - Greek antiquity, Roman antiquity , the Gothic Middle Ages and the Renaissance. There are five more putti on the painting room wing, the western tip of the art academy. They stand for different types of painting: landscape, nude, costume, animal and portrait painting.
The south side facing the Frauenkirche is significantly less decorated than the front facing the Elbe. Above the southern entrance are the sandstone figures evening (left) and morning on the gable, which can also be interpreted as a master and his pupil and were created by Oskar Rassau . The gusset figures above the window arches of the pavilions to the left and right of the southern entrance are allegories of zeal and doubt as well as diligence and patience. On the left hand side you can read the inscription “DEMATERLAND ZU ZIERAND EHR”, on the right “UNDER THE GOVERNMENT KOENIG ALBERTS ERBAUT”. On the south-east side there is the inscription "COMPLETE MDCCCLXXXXIII", which shows the year 1893 contrary to the usual spelling of Roman numerals .
The front of the exhibition building is also lavishly decorated. The tympanum and high gable in particular were elaborately designed. Here the Saxonia Johannes Schillings stands out.
history
The Dresden Art Academy, one of the two predecessor institutions of today's University of Fine Arts Dresden , was founded in 1764 as the "General Art Academy of Painting, Sculpture, Engraving and Architecture". Just a few years later, it was based in the Fürstenberg House , very close to where it is today. From 1791 to 1895 the art academy was housed in the Brühl Library , the predecessor of the secondary school . The neighboring Brühlsche Galerie used it for academic art exhibitions at that time.
The northeast of the inner old town was a walled, inaccessible to the public restricted area until the 19th century. Among other things, the strictly secured mint of Dresden and the Dresden armory were located here . The Brühlsche Terrasse, on which the Café Reale was located, was opened to the public in 1814. In the mid-1880s the picture changed in this part of the city center. From 1884 to 1887, Adolph Canzler led the conversion of the armory to the Albertinum Museum. The mint was torn down in 1887 and the minting moved to the Muldenhütten mint in the same year . This created a larger open space near the Brühl Terrace.
The government of the Kingdom of Saxony had already ordered a new building for the art academy in 1884 due to a lack of space in the old premises. The decisive factor for the settlement on the Brühlsche Terrasse was the exposed location in the city center, the long tradition of the academy at this location and the possibility of building a building with large studio windows for incident light on the north side, which could not be obstructed by other houses. to build. Also in 1884, Constantin Lipsius , himself an architecture professor at the academy, received the planning contract. Even Ernst Hähnel was involved in the completion of the construction, however, did not live.
For construction, however, the Brühlsche Galerie and Café Reale had to be demolished, both of which had to give way in 1887. In the run-up to this, there had been heated disputes with town planners, architects and citizens who wanted a more detailed solution at this location instead of a monumental building. Finally, in 1887, the construction of the new art academy with the attached exhibition building began. After seven years of construction, the building was ready for occupancy in 1894. Even after it was completed, the discussions did not abate. The building was criticized as unbalanced and contrary to Dresden's building tradition, the facade decorations as overloaded and the dome, which was soon mocked as a lemon squeezer, was criticized as disturbing because of its close proximity to the Frauenkirche.
The Dresden art historian and literary scholar Fritz Löffler commented on this in his work “The Old Dresden” as follows: “In a completely wrong place, on the Brühl Terrace, Konstantin Lipsius built the art academy with the adjoining art association from 1891 to 1894. With her he degraded the fortress wall to the base for his project. It is only with deep regret that one can think of the loss of the noble small buildings Knöffel had created for Brühl and which gradually fell in the 19th century. The glass dome of the academy, known by the population as the lemon squeezer, was a permanent nuisance when viewed against the Frauenkirche. Since its loss, the crowning Nike Robert Henzes has become a favorite prop. "
However, in addition to the high artistic quality of the details, the fact that the building consolidated Dresden's status as a city of art and culture of European rank and had a decisive impact on the cityscape like no other building since the Baroque was generally recognized . The Royal Art Academy and the Saxon Art Association began using the building in 1895.
On February 13 and 14, the air raids on Dresden caused severe war damage. In contrast to most of the buildings in the area, which often collapsed along with their outer walls, the cubature of the art academy was retained despite major fire losses. After the clean-up, reconstruction began. As early as 1952, teaching could be resumed in the building. The last wings of the building were restored by 1965, and in 1968 the lemon squeezer was given new glazing. A fundamental renovation was not carried out until after the fall of the Wall . The state of Saxony had the building systematically renovated from 1991 to 2002. It was only in this context that the art gallery in the Lipsius building , which was not usable during the GDR era, was rebuilt and inaugurated in 2005. The design of the exhibition building by the architects Auer + Weber , Stuttgart / Munich, and Rolf Zimmermann, Dresden, received the 2007 “ Nike ” architecture prize in the “Perfection of Detail” category.
literature
- Manfred Altner et al .: From the Royal Art Academy to the Academy of Fine Arts. 1764-1989. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1990, ISBN 978-3364001456 .
- Wolfgang Rother: The art temple on the Brühl terrace. Constantin Lipsius' academy and exhibition building in Dresden. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1994, ISBN 978-3364002927 .
Web links
- hfbk-dresden.de: Homepage of the Dresden University of Fine Arts
- Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau on the website of the Dresden State Art Collections
- brunnenturmfigur.de: Buildings on the Brühl Terrace: Art Academy and exhibition building
- neumarkt-dresden.de: The art association building
Individual evidence
- ^ Baufachinformation.de: Saxon sandstone at the Dresden Art Academy. ( Memento from April 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Art Academy. In: elbtal.com. Archived from the original on July 22, 2011 ; Retrieved March 5, 2013 .
- ↑ brunnenturmfigur.de: buildings on Brühl's Terrace: Art Academy and exhibition building. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
- ↑ Art Academy. In: Dresden-und-Sachsen.de. Retrieved March 5, 2013 .
- ^ Fritz Löffler : Das alten Dresden , Leipzig 1981, p. 389.
Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 10 " N , 13 ° 44 ′ 33" E