Mourning the death of Hans Belting - art science professor of the first hour at the HfG Karlsruhe

The State Academy of Design in Karlsruhe mourns the death of its former professor Hans Belting, who passed away on the night of January 10 at the age of 87.

Born on July 7, 1935, the art historian was of special significance to the HfG Karlsruhe. After receiving his doctorate in 1959 in Mainz (with a dissertation on the early medieval frescoes of the Basilica dei Ss. Martiri in Cimitile) and numerous teaching posts, including at the universities of Hamburg, Heidelberg, and Munich, he was one of the founding figures of the Hochschule für Gestaltung as professor of art history in 1992. From 2000 Belting also directed the graduate program "Bild Körper Medium. An Anthropological Perspective ", which aimed to redefine the "place of images" in the age of electronic media and thus make a fundamental contribution to interdisciplinary image studies.

This college, which was funded by the DFG until 2009, continues to radiate today through its many participants; Belting himself continued its program in 2004-2007 as director of the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna and at other stations around the world, but remained connected to the HfG and the ZKM in Karlsruhe, where he received important impulses for the examination of the arts in a globalizing world and contributed to updating the canon of art history.

Belting has produced an almost incalculable number of writings ranging from the beginnings of the arts to the recent present, most notably his study "Bild und Kult. A History of the Image before the Age of Art " from 1990, which has been translated into many languages. With Belting, the subject of art history loses one of its most renowned personalities.