KUNSTAKADEMIE DÜSSELDORF - ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS

The list of former students and professors reads as an art encyclopedia. The Düsseldorf Public Academy of Fine Arts is the cradle of many famous post-war and contemporary German artists. They find the «who is who» of the great names such as Joseph Beuys, Jörg Immendorff, Imi Knoebel, Gerhard Richter and Katharina Sieverding, or photographers like Bernd and Hilla Becher, as well as Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, of international repute. Even the writer and Nobel laureate Günther Grass (1927-2015) studied the graphic and plastic arts from 1948 to 1952. The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is housed in a nineteenth century building built by architect Hermann Riffart between 1875 and 1879 in the style of historicism. The academy is located near the Oberkasseler Brücke bridge, between the Rhine and the courtyard garden (Hofgarten). Its origin dates back to the seventeenth century. It was founded in 1773 by the prince Charles-Théodore (1724-1799).