Hans Belting

Year of birth, place
1935, Andernach, Germany
Biography
Hans Belting is a German art historian and theorist of medieval and Renaissance art, as well as contemporary art and image theory. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and studied at the universities of Mainz and Rome. In 1959 he earned his Ph.D. in art history at the University of Mainz. Subsequently he has held a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University), Washington, D.C.
 
Belting taught as a professor at the University of Hamburg in 1966. He taught as a professor of art history at the University of Heidelberg, and from 1980 to 1992 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität at Munich. From 1992 until his retirement in 2002, he was professor at the Institute for Art History and Media Theory at the University of Art and Design in Karlsruhe. From October 2004 until the end of September 2007, Belting served as Director of the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (International Research Centre for Cultural Studies) in Vienna.
 
Belting is a member of various scientific academies in Germany and the U.S., including the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and honorary member of the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (since 2006). He is a member of the Order pour le Mérite of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna (MUMOK). He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. 2013 he was awarded the I Tatti Mongan Prize of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti) in Florence. With an impressive oeuvre Hans Belting has given to history of art new impetus by focusing on the function of images in European societies and the development from the cult image into the art image. His writings have even influenced the creation of some of the most important contemporary artists. In 2015 Belting has received the International Balzan Price for the History of Europen Art. His books have been translated into more than ten languages.
 
His publications include more than thirty books among which are: »Faces: Eine Geschichte des Gesichts« (C. H. Beck, München 2013), »Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science« (2011), »Art History after Modernism« by Hans Belting, Mitch Cohen and Kenneth J. Northcott (2003), »Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art« (1997) and famously »The End of the History of Art?« (1987).

[2015]

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