The Institute for Fine Arts is a center of artistic education, practice, and research. It aims to provide students with comprehensive yet precisely targeted artistic competence, including technique and content. For the past ten years, the institute has consistently expanded on the classic disciplines of painting and sculpture, to include fields such as contemporary media, photography, film, video, performance, and conceptual art. These developments provide today’s students with 18 studios of artistic education. By expanding our workshops and enhancing autonomous teaching by non-professorial staff, we have been able to establish a wide and distinctive scope of artistic development.

A close link to the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies supports us by the direct combination of theoretical and practice-related teaching content. In its current configuration, the Institute for Fine Arts offers a combination of individual and group artistic instruction, workshops, and laboratories with different foci, as well as a large variety of courses in practice and/or theory, many of which are interdisciplinary in nature.

As a part of the curriculum, artists rooted in international discourse manage the Studios (central artistic subjects), and counsel and accompany students in their courses. Together, they develop projects visible beyond the scope of the Academy. Apart from teaching, the Academy has been increasingly focused on the field of artistic research—research that, in turn, enhances the number and quality of courses offered.

Sufficient room and space, separate workplaces, and state-of-the-art professional equipment support our students in their individual development and prepare them for independent work after their studies. The Institute’s international orientation is shown not only by its selection of lecturers, but also by the large number of international students in attendance and the constant presence of its graduates in a very comprehensive artistic context.