1.
Olomouc
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Olomouc is a city in Moravia, in the east of the Czech Republic. Located on the Morava River, the city is the ecclesiastical metropolis, today it is an administrative centre of the Olomouc Region and sixth largest city in the Czech Republic. The city has about 100,154 residents, and its urban zone has a population of about 480,000 people. Olomouc is said to occupy the site of a Roman fort founded in the imperial period, during the 6th century, Slavs migrated into the area. As early as the 7th century, a centre of power developed in the present-day quarter of Povel. Around 810 the local Slavonic ruler was defeated by troops of Great Moravian rulers, a new centre, where the Great Moravian governor resided, developed at the gord at Předhradí, a quarter of the inner city. This settlement survived the defeat of the Great Moravia and gradually became the capital of the province of Moravia, the bishopric of Olomouc was founded in 1063. Centuries later in 1777, it was raised to the rank of an archbishopric, the bishopric was moved from the church of St. Peter to the church of Saint Wenceslas in 1141 under bishop Jindřich Zdík. The bishops palace was built in the Romanesque architectural style, the bishopric acquired large tracts of land, especially in northern Moravia, and was one of the richest in the area. Olomouc became one of the most important settlements in Moravia and a seat of the Přemyslid government, in 1306 King Wenceslas III stopped here on his way to Poland. He was going to fight Władysław I the Elbow-high to claim his rights to the Polish crown and was assassinated, with his death, the whole Přemyslid dynasty died out. The city was founded in the mid-13th century and became one of the most important trade. In the Middle Ages, it was the biggest town in Moravia, Olomouc finally lost after the Swedes took the city and held it for eight years. In 1235, the Mongols launched an invasion of Europe, after the Battle of Legnica in Poland, the Mongols carried their raids into Moravia, but were defensively defeated at the fortified town of Olomouc. The Mongols subsequently invaded and defeated Hungary, in 1454 the city expelled its Jewish population as part of a wave of anti-Semitism, also seen in Spain and Portugal. The second half of the 15th century is considered the start of Olomoucs golden age and it hosted several royal meetings, and Matthias Corvinus was elected here as King of Bohemia by the estates in 1469. In 1479 two kings of Bohemia met here and concluded an agreement for splitting the country, participating in the Protestant Reformation, Moravia became mostly Protestant. During the Thirty Years War, in 1640 Olomouc was occupied by the Swedes for eight years and they left the city in ruins, and it became second to Brno
2.
Stuttgart
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Stuttgart is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the Stuttgart Cauldron an hour from the Swabian Jura. Stuttgarts urban area has a population of 623,738, making it the sixth largest city in Germany. 2.7 million people live in the administrative region and another 5.3 million people in its metropolitan area. Since the 6th millennium BC, the Stuttgart area has been an important agricultural area and has been host to a number of cultures seeking to utilize the rich soil of the Neckar valley. The Roman Empire conquered the area in 83 AD and built a massive Castrum near Bad Cannstatt, Stuttgarts roots were truly laid in the 10th century with its founding by Liudolf, Duke of Swabia as a stud farm for his warhorses. Overshadowed by nearby Cannstatt, the town grew steadily and was granted a charter in 1320, the fortunes of Stuttgart turned with those of the House of Württemberg, and they made it the capital of their County, Duchy, and Kingdom from the 15th Century to 1918. Stuttgart prospered despite setbacks in the forms of the Thirty Years War and devastating air raids by the Allies on the city, however, by 1952, the city had bounced back and became the major economic, industrial, tourism and publishing center it is today. Stuttgart is also an important transport junction, and possesses the sixth largest airport in Germany. Such companies as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Daimler AG, Dinkelacker, Stuttgart is unusual in the scheme of German cities. It is spread across a variety of hills, valleys and parks and this is often a source of surprise to visitors who associate the city with its reputation as the Cradle of the Automobile. The citys tourism slogan is Stuttgart offers more, under current plans to improve transport links to the international infrastructure, the city unveiled a new logo and slogan in March 2008 describing itself as Das neue Herz Europas. For business, it describes itself as Where business meets the future, in July 2010, Stuttgart unveiled a new city logo, designed to entice more business people to stay in the city and enjoy breaks in the area. Stuttgart is a city of mostly immigrants, according to Dorling Kindersley Publishings Eyewitness Travel Guide to Germany, In the city of Stuttgart, every third inhabitant is a foreigner. 40% of Stuttgarts residents, and 64% of the population below the age of five are of immigrant background, the reason for this being that the city was founded in 950 AD by Duke Liudolf of Swabia to breed warhorses. Originally, the most important location in the Neckar river valley as the rim of the Stuttgart basin at what is today Bad Cannstatt. As with many military installations, a settlement sprang up nearby, when they did, the town was left in the capable hands of a local brickworks that produced sophisticated architectural ceramics and pottery. When the Romans were driven back past the Rhine and Danube rivers in the 3rd Century by the Alamanni, in 700, Duke Gotfrid mentions a Chan Stada in a document regarding property
3.
Realism (arts)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life
4.
Modern art
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Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with ideas about the nature of materials. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic for the traditional arts, more recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or postmodern art. Matisses two versions of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting, analytic cubism was jointly developed by Picasso and Georges Braque, exemplified by Violin and Candlestick, Paris, from about 1908 through 1912. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé, the notion of modern art is closely related to modernism. Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of modern painting can be located earlier. The date perhaps most commonly identified as marking the birth of art is 1863. Earlier dates have also proposed, among them 1855 and 1784. In the words of art historian H, harvard Arnason, Each of these dates has significance for the development of modern art, but none categorically marks a completely new beginning. A gradual metamorphosis took place in the course of a hundred years, the strands of thought that eventually led to modern art can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and even to the 17th century. The important modern art critic Clement Greenberg, for instance, called Immanuel Kant the first real Modernist but also drew a distinction, The Enlightenment criticized from the outside. The French Revolution of 1789 uprooted assumptions and institutions that had for centuries been accepted with little question and this gave rise to what art historian Ernst Gombrich called a self-consciousness that made people select the style of their building as one selects the pattern of a wallpaper. The pioneers of art were Romantics, Realists and Impressionists. By the late 19th century, additional movements which were to be influential in art had begun to emerge. The advocates of realism stood against the idealism of the academic art that enjoyed public. The most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions or through public exhibitions of their own work. There were official, government-sponsored painters unions, while governments regularly held exhibitions of new fine
5.
Gotha
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Gotha is the fifth-largest city in Thuringia, Germany, located 20 kilometres west of Erfurt and 25 km east of Eisenach with a population of 44,000. The city is the capital of the district of Gotha and was also a residence of the Ernestine Wettins from 1640 until the end of monarchy in Germany in 1918. The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha originating here spawned many European rulers, including the houses of England, Belgium, Portugal. The first duke, Ernest the Pious was famous for his wise rule, in the 18th century, the Almanach de Gotha was first published in the city. The cartographer Justus Perthes and the encyclopedist Joseph Meyer made Gotha a leading centre of German publishing around 1800, in the early 19th century, Gotha was a birthplace of the German insurance business. The SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875 by merging two predecessors, in that period Gotha became an industrial centre, with companies such as the Gothaer Waggonfabrik, a producer of trams and later aeroplanes. Gotha lies in the part of the Thuringian Basin in a flat. Gotha has existed at least since the 8th century, when it was mentioned in a document signed by Charlemagne as Villa Gotaha in 775, the first settlement was probably located around todays Hersdorfplatz outside the north-eastern edge of the later city centre. During the 11th century, the nearby Ludowingians received the village and established the city in the late 12th century, as Gotha became their second most important city after Eisenach. One of the oldest pieces of evidence of trade in the city is the Gotha cache of coins with nearly 800 Bracteates. In 1180, Gotha was first mentioned as a city, when the area between Brühl and Jüdenstraße became the core of urban development, highlighting the early presence of Jews in this old trading town. The parish church of this first urban settlement was St. Marys Church at Schlossberg, the castle was first mentioned in 1217. As the Ludowingians died out in 1247, Gotha became part of the Wettins territories, the new town east of Querstraße was established in the early 15th century. The monastery was founded before 1251 and abandoned in 1525, until 1665, the bourse of Gotha was located in the centre of Hauptmarkt square inside the Renaissance building, which hosts the town hall today. The medieval town hall was located on the edge of Hauptmarkt. Water supply was a big problem, because Gotha is not located on a river, in 1369, Landgrave Balthasar had the Leinakanal built. This channel, over 25 kilometres long, brought water from the Thuringian Forest to the city. The main businesses of medieval Gotha were cloth-making and the woad trade, the Reformation was introduced in Gotha in 1524 and the castle was rebuilt as a larger fortress between 1530 and 1541
6.
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
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The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is a public art school of higher education in Vienna, Austria. In 1701 he was ennobled by Emperor Joseph I as Freiherr of the Empire, with his death in 1714, the academy temporarily closed. On 20 January 1725, Emperor Charles VI appointed the Frenchman Jacob van Schuppen as Prefect and Director of the Academy, hofakademie der Maler, Bildhauer und Baukunst. Upon Charles death in 1740, the academy at first declined, however during the rule of his daughter Empress Maria Theresa, a new statute reformed the academy in 1751. The prestige of the academy grew during the deanships of Michelangelo Unterberger and Paul Troger, in 1772, there were further reforms to the organisational structure. Chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz integrated all existing art schools into the k. k. vereinigten Akademie der bildenden Künste, the word vereinigten was later dropped. In 1822 the art cabinet grew significantly with the bequest of honorary member Anton Franz de Paula Graf Lamberg-Sprinzenstein and his collection still forms the backbone of the art on display. In 1872 Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria approved a statute making the academy the supreme government authority for the arts, a new building was constructed according to plans designed by the faculty Theophil Hansen in the course of the layout of the Ringstraße boulevard. On 3 April 1877, the building on Schillerplatz in the Innere Stadt district was inaugurated. In 1907 and 1908, young Adolf Hitler, who had come from Linz, was denied admission to the drawing class. He stayed in Vienna, subsisting on his allowance. Soon he had withdrawn into poverty and started selling amateur paintings, mostly watercolours, during the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany from 1938–1945, the academy was forced to heavily reduce its number of Jewish staff. After World War II, the academy was reconstituted in 1955 and it has had university status since 1998, but retained its original name. It is currently the only Austrian university that doesnt have the university in its name. The Academy currently has about 900 students, almost a quarter of which are foreign students and its faculty includes stars such as Peter Sloterdijk. 110,000 volumes and its etching cabinet has about 150,000 drawings, the collection is one of the biggest in Austria, and is used for academic purposes, although portions are also open to the general public. Official website website of the Media Server Study in Austria, A Guide
7.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber
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Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a town in the district of Ansbach of Mittelfranken, the Franconia region of Bavaria, Germany. It is well known for its medieval old town, a destination for tourists from around the world. It is part of the popular Romantic Road through southern Germany, Rothenburg was a Free Imperial City from the late Middle Ages to 1803. The name Rothenburg ob der Tauber means, in German, Red fortress above the Tauber and this is so because the town is located on a plateau overlooking the Tauber River. As to the name Rothenburg, some say it comes from the German words rot and burg, the name may also refer to the process of retting flax for linen production. In 950, the system in today’s castle garden was constructed by the Count of Comburg-Rothenburg. In 1070, the counts of Comburg-Rothenburg, who owned the village of Gebsattel. The counts of the Comburg-Rothenburg dynasty died out in 1116, the last count, Count Heinrich, Emperor Heinrich V appointed instead his nephew Konrad von Hohenstaufen as successor to the Comburg-Rothenburg properties. He held court there and appointed officials called reeves to act as caretakers, in 1170, the city of Rothenburg was founded at the time of the building of Staufer Castle. The centre was the marketplace and St. James Church, the development of the oldest fortification can be seen, the old cellar/old moat and the milk market. Walls and towers were built in the 13th century, preserved are the “White Tower” and the Markus Tower with the Röder Arch. From 1194 to 1254, the representatives of the Staufer dynasty governed the area around Rothenburg, around this time, the Order of St. John and other orders were founded near St. James Church and a Dominican nunnery. From 1241 to 1242, the Staufer Imperial tax statistics recorded the names of the Jews in Rothenburg, rabbi Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenburg had a great reputation as a jurist in Europe. Most members of the family were arrested and interred by the Nazis and are presumed to have been killed during the Second World War. The family is survived by its last living descendant, Andrew Sandilands Graf von Rothberg, 9th Count of Rothenburg, in 1274, Rothenburg was accorded privileges by King Rudolf of Habsburg as a Free Imperial City. Three famous fairs were established in the city and in the following centuries, the citizens of the city and the Knights of the Hinterland build the Franziskaner Monastery and the Holy Ghost Hospital. The German Order began the building of St. James Church, the Heilig Blut pilgrimage attracted many pilgrims to Rothenburg, at the time one of the 20 largest cities of the Holy Roman Empire. The population was around 5,500 people within the city walls, the Staufer Castle was destroyed by an earthquake in 1356, the St. Blaise chapel is the last remnant today
8.
Fritz von Uhde
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Fritz von Uhde was a German painter of genre and religious subjects. His style laying between Realism and Impressionism, he was known as Germanys outstanding impressionist and he became one of the first painters who introduced en plein air art in his country. Uhde was born in Wolkenburg, Saxony and his family, moderately wealthy civil servants, had artistic interests. His father was actually a part-time painter and his grandfather was director of the general director of the Royal Museums in Dresden. Uhde found art appealing while studying at the Gymnasium at this city, totally at variance with the spirit prevailing there, later that year he left his studies to join the army. He became a professor of horsemanship to the regiment of the assembled guard, after meeting the painter Makart in Vienna in 1876, Uhde left the army in 1877 with the intention to become an artist. He moved to Munich in that year to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, there, he particularly came to admire the Dutch old masters, specially Rembrandt. He also taught Lilla Cabot Perry, influencing her use of color and he worked for a short time in that masters studio, but principally studied from nature and his old Netherland models. As a late starter in his art studies, he was determined to succeed quickly, the final work he painted at Munkácsys school, The Singer, was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1880, where it was awarded an honorable mention. This conflict between innovation and caution characterized the greater part of his career, in about 1890, Uhde became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He was, with Max Slevogt, Ludwig Dill and Lovis Corinth and he later joined the Berlin Secession as well. Uhde became a member of the academies of Munich, Dresden. He became the first President of the Secession, and progressing in his naturalistic conception and he gave rise to a complete change in German art, and counted among his followers most of the younger generation. Adolf Hölzel was influenced by him in his early work and he became less active in the art world after 1900, but continued to paint until his last days. He died in Munich in 1911 and his early work consisted of landscapes and battle pieces, but Uhdes inclination was later almost solely directed towards genre art and religious subjects. His father had been the President of the Lutheran Church Council in Wolkenburg, Saxony, although the social realism of Uhdes work was often criticized as vulgar or ugly, his paintings also attracted the admiration of others. His work was known by the French public. Vincent van Gogh mentioned Uhde in personal correspondence, the critic Otto Julius Bierbaum, who prepared a biographical writing of him, said as a painter of children
9.
Impressionism
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Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the art community in France. The development of Impressionism in the arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting and they constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, the Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, the Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued, landscape, the Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artists hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish, the Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were led by Édouard Manet. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manets The Luncheon on the Grass primarily because it depicted a woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, the jurys severely worded rejection of Manets painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists
10.
Dachau
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Dachau is a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria and it is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich with roughly 45,000 inhabitants. The historic centre of town with its 18th-century castle is situated on an elevation, Dachau was founded in the 9th century. It was home to artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The town is known for its proximity to the infamous Dachau concentration camp built in 1933 by the Nazis. The origin of the name is not clearly or certainly known, some guess it comes from the kelts who lived before the Germans came. Others guess it comes from old high German from daha, which means clay, as the Amper River would divert into backwaters in several places, there were many fords making it possible to cross the river. The oldest findings of human presence date back to the Stone Age. The most noteworthy findings were discovered near Feldgeding in the adjoining municipality Bergkirchen, around 1000 B. C. the Celts arrived in this area and settled. The name “Dachau” originated in the Celtic Dahauua, which translates to “loamy meadow”. Some theories assume the name “Amper” river may derive from the Celtic word for “water”, approximately at the turn of the first millennium the Romans conquered the area and incorporated it into the province of Rhaetia. A Roman trade road between Salzburg and today’s Augsburg is said to have run through Dachau, remains of this old route are found along the Amper marshlands. The first known documentation of Dachau occurs in a deed issued by the Noble Erchana of Dahauua to the prince-bishop of Freising. From the 12th century, Dachau sered as a residence for several Bavarian princes. Between 1240 and 1270, Dachau was granted market privileges, first by Duke Otto II of Bavaria, in 1467 Sigismund, Duke of Bavaria resigned and then kept only Bavaria-Dachau as his domain until his death in 1501. Between 1546 and 1577, the House of Wittelsbach had the Dachau Palace erected in the Renaissance style, from June 1715 to Autumn 1717, Joseph Effner remodeled the palace to suit the contemporary taste in style. At the beginning of the 19th century, the castles north-, east-, the west-wing housing the dance hall with a superb view of the enchanting gardens, still remains today. On the first floor the original renaissance wood carved, coffered ceiling can be admired by visitors, beginning during the second half of the 19th century the town became home to numerous artists
