Hitler’s Failed Art Portfolio Goes to Auction
We’ve all heard about Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s stint a failed artist but now we get to judge for ourselves as the portfolio he submitted to the Vienna Academy of Art is going to auction.
Richard Westwood-Brookes, who is selling the archive of drawings (most dating form 1908), said:
We know Hitler was twice turned down by the Vienna Academy of Art. The second time in 1908 he wasn’t even invited to take the exam. These works make up a collection that he would have submitted.
My verdict: a meh artist. Who knew evil could be so banal?
One fact I learned via the Telegraph’s excellent annotated slideshow:
Hitler moved to Vienna as a young man in 1905 and lived a bohemian life, making small amounts of money by selling pictures he copied from postcards. At one point he ended up in a hostel for the homeless and later he claimed it was in Vienna where the fires of his anti-Semitism were ignited.
Hitler a bohemian? Who knew.
Watch the whole slideshow here.
