11 April 1923, Wednesday

Vienna. Bruno Schulz takes the entrance exam to study at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Schulz decided to become a painter already during the First World War, and for this reason he interrupted his architectural studies at the College of Technology1. After many years, as an established artist, he returned to Vienna to realize his youthful dream. On 11 April 1923 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna*, after completing the application number 4572, he took the entrance examination to the Department of Painting3. Before a ten-person committee chaired by the university’s Rector, the well-known graphic artist Ferdinand Schmutzer, he was obliged to submit a portfolio of art works, make a drawing of a model from nature and a composition sketch on a given topic. Apart from the Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, the commission included Vice-Rector professor Josef Müllner and professors: Rudolf Bacher, Ferdinand Andri, Hans Bitterlich, Julius Schmid, Rudolf Jettmar, Josef Jungwirth, Hans Tichy and Karl Sterrer4. (js) (transl. ms)

  • 1
    On 9 August 1924*, when applying for the position of a teacher of drawing at the gymnasium in Drogobych, Schulz wrote: “Having interrupted my studies for a longer period of time due to the war, I continued them in 1917/1918 in Vienna, and there, under the influence of old art works, my attraction to painting was increasingly waking up and made me quit my studies of architecture and devote myself to the painting profession”.
  • 2
    The application includes personal data (Universitätsarchiv der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Verwaltungsakten: Jahreszahl 1923, Meldungsbuch 1923).
  • 3
    On the same day, two other people passed the examination before the same ten-person committee: sculptor Maria Louise Simard and painter Johannes Wohlfahrt, who chose magical realism as his style (Neue Sachlichkeit). Both are admitted (UAAbKW, Verwaltungsakten: Sitzungsprotokoll des Professorenkollegiums vom 15.04.1923).
  • 4
    Ibid.