Wieland Schmied

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Wieland Schmied (born February 5, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main ; † April 22, 2014 in Vorchdorf , Upper Austria ) was an Austrian art historian and critic , exhibition maker, literary scholar and writer , and since 1986 professor of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , from 1995 to 2004 President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts .

Life

Wieland Schmied was the eldest son of the Austrian philosopher Walther Schmied-Kowarzik and his second wife, the German-Baltic poet Gertrud von den Brincken from Kurland . He grew up in Frankfurt am Main and Friedberg and in 1939 moved with his parents to Vienna. After graduating from high school in Mödling , he studied law (doctorate in 1951) and art history at the University of Vienna . He had been an Austrian citizen since 1949.

After receiving his doctorate, Schmied worked on the editorial team of the magazine Die Furche . From 1960 to 1962 he was an editor at Insel Verlag and an art critic at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . From 1963 to 1973 he was director of the Kestner Society in Hanover, then until 1975 chief curator of the Nationalgalerie Berlin , from 1978 to 1986 he was director of the DAAD in Berlin and head of the Berlin artist program as successor to Karl Ruhrberg and from 1980 to 1999 president of the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts Salzburg .

From 1986 to 1994 he was professor of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . He was the rector of this academy from 1988 to 1993. From 1988 to 2004 he was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and there from 1992 to 1995 director of the "Department of Fine Arts", from 1995 to 2004 president of the academy. In 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Wieland Schmied had been married to the graphic artist and photographer Erika Schmied since 1966 , with whom he published several books. They became parents of two daughters. Most recently he lived in Vorchdorf / Lederau in Upper Austria, where he died after a serious illness in April 2014 at the age of 85.

Exhibitions

As director of the Kestner Society in Hanover, Wieland Schmied organized a total of 99 exhibitions, for whose catalogs he wrote numerous forewords and other contributions. From Berlin he curated many important international exhibitions at home and abroad on the art of the 20th century. In 1977 he was responsible for the “Hand Drawings” department at Documenta 6 in Kassel , and he was also in charge of the “New Objectivity and Surrealism” department at the 15th European Art Exhibition in Berlin. For the Goethe Institute in 1980, together with Eberhard Kolb and Eberhard Roters, he created the exhibition and catalog “Critical Graphics of the Weimar Period”, which was shown worldwide and which made German graphics of the 1920s known for the first time. At the Katholikentage in Berlin in 1980, Signs of Faith - Spirit of the Avant-garde , he curated the exhibition “Religious Tendencies in Art of the 20th Century” and in 1990 Contemporary Eternity the exhibition “Traces of the Transcendent in Art of Our Time”. In 1982 Schmied was a member of the board of trustees of the Zeitgeist exhibition in Berlin.

Literary work

In addition to numerous works on art and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, Wieland Schmied also published his own poetry. He was u. a. friends with HC Artmann , Thomas Bernhard and Friedensreich Hundertwasser (Friedrich Stowasser).

Schmied saw a main source of artistic inspiration in spirituality ; he used to remember that inspiration, like spirituality, is born of esprit . He also referred explicitly to non-Christian spirituality and religious history . Man complete his creatureliness by becoming creative himself. "Man as creator has before him the archetype of God the Creator."

Awards

Works

literature

  • Eugen Blume (inlet): Joseph Beuys. Provocation of the vital substance of society / art and anti-art (panel discussion "open ended. Art and anti-art" between Max Bense , Joseph Beuys , Max Bill , Arnold Gehlen and Wieland Schmied, January 27, 1970), Volume 3; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88609-077-9 .
  • Wolf Vostell. Happening, Dé-coll / age. In: Wolf Vostell retrospective 1958–1974. New National Gallery Berlin, Berlin, 1974.
  • Against the current. Wieland Schmied. Images and texts , ed. and designed by Erika Schmied, 2016, ISBN 978-3-99028-448-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mittelbayerische.de
  2. ↑ Alex Stock: Spirituality of the Avant-Garde. What could be learned from Wieland Schmied. In: Voices of the Time . Vol. 68 (2014), pp. 312-316, here p. 314.
  3. ^ Wieland Schmied: Spirituality in the art of the 20th century. In: Communio , Vol. 12 (183), pp. 73-90, here pp. 76, 78.
  4. ↑ Wieland Schmied: Window into the Invisible. To the art of the Christians . Glock and Lutz, Nuremberg 1960.
  5. ↑ Wieland Schmied in the catalog for the exhibition “Presence Eternity. Traces of the transcendent in the art of our time ”, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, April 7 to June 24, 1990, p. 48.
  6. ↑ DGPA
  7. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schmied, Wieland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian essayist and art historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 2014
Place of death Vorchdorf