Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava
HISTORY
Academy of Fine Arts and Design was founded in the year 1949 at the dawn of totalitarian regime in the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. For next forty years, the institution was under the pressure of political doctrine promoting so called socialist realism in arts, as well as suffering the political purges affecting badly the whole society. In spite of troubled historical development and atmosphere of repression, at AFAD there were few spheres of so called “positive deviation”. The resistance to the orthodoxy of socialist realism was made possible thanks to the intellectual and artistic background of some of the professors and their personal approach to their students. After years of totalitarianism, in 1989 the AFAD was one of the few higher education institutions in the country where the whole teaching staff was re-selected in an open competition.
TODAY
Today the AFAD is a present—day oriented school. It offers study at the undergraduate – Bachelor’s (BS), graduate – Master’s (MS) and doctoral (DS) study levels. Bachelor’s and master’s study programmes may be studied only in daily form. Doctoral university study may be undertaken on a daily or external basis.
AFAD is divided to 12 departments: Architecture; Photography and New Media; Printmaking and Other Media; Intermedia and Multimedia; Painting and Other Media; Design; Restoration; Sculpture, Object, Installation; Theory and History of Art; Textiles; Applied Art; Visual Communication.
SYSTEM OF EDUCATION
Study is based on education in studios. Sudents of every department can choose between several studios, wich leads experienced, practiced teachers and assistents. This form of education allow individual approach to student and leave space for talent development and personal originality.
Studio is not a closed cell. It prepares students for real world. They got over different projects during each semester. Some of them are individual and personal but lots of them are based on cooperation with real clients and companies.
Our aim is to raise proffesionals with realistic view and with original solutions.
STUDY AT AFAD
Mobility—the exchange stay at AFAD is offered for the duration of one semester. For students incoming under the programs Erasmus LLP, CEEPUS and Bilateral Agreement Program cooperation
with partner institutions the study is free of charge. However, students may be asked to cover particular expenses connected with extra costs for administration processes and materials.
DEPARTMENTS/STUDIOS
Department of Textiles
- clothing not as a industrial product which follows trends, but as a medium with own informative value. Clothing is as a 3D object, which talks, comunicate in language of his autor or user.
- textile as a multipurpose medium, which offers possibilities from uniqe textile to soft sculpture.
- important part of education process are interdisciplinary overlaps to other art departments.
Department of Design
- our aim is to create products which influence our everyday lifes, they underlines individuality of person, talks about their autor, his relation to present time, they are open to new trends and experiments.
- good designer feels responsibility of design for ethics and ecological awarness. He looks to future and feels the real needs of todays designer practise.
- studio of transport design rise up students which are well oriented in a field of transport devices. From experimental works to real tasks from specific companies. We cooperate with top studios (Ford center in Koln,Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Škoda design in Mladá Boleslav, atc.)
Department of visual comunication
- department in its dramaturgical plan partially simulate real dynamic world of graphic studios and adwertising companies. But priority lies on encouragement in experimental projects, unconventionalsolutions which are not limited by commerce, oriented on edge forms of visual culture (comics, computer games, animation, atc.)
- we want to include whole medial spread of visual communication till overhang of its borders to architecture and other fields of visual art.
