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# Hitler’s Failed Art Portfolio Goes to Auction
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/hitler-e2-80-99s-failed-art-portfolio-goes-to-auction/
- Published: 2010-04-19T13:00:50.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:03:16.000Z
- Description: 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.
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: News, #image-position-hidden, Opinion, Adolf Hitler, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-17 09:23 (2009-2011)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-19-at-8-17-29-am.png)

One of drawings Hitler submitted as part of his portfolio to the Vienna Academy of Art (via Telegraph.co.uk) (click to enlarge)

[We’ve all heard about Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s stint as 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.](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/7512045/Adolf-Hitler-art-to-be-auctioned.html?image=1&ref=hyperallergic.com)

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*](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/7512045/Adolf-Hitler-art-to-be-auctioned.html?image=1&ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*