少年希特勒畫作被指只有“中學(xué)生水平”

最近，阿道夫希特勒一組少年時(shí)期的畫作被展出。專家認(rèn)為他的技法只有高中生水準(zhǔn)。他曾兩次報(bào)考維也納美術(shù)學(xué)院、兩次被拒絕。如果知道拒絕他后來會(huì)付出如此大的代價(jià)，不知道當(dāng)初那些拒絕他的教授們又會(huì)如何選擇……

They represent the hopes of an ambitious young artist.

But these sketches failed to impress selectors at a prestigious art college . . . and those dreams were shattered. Who knows just how momentous were the implications of that rejection.

The teenage artist is believed to have been Adolf Hitler. It may be folklore, but it is now said he blamed a Jewish professor at the Vienna Academy of Art for refusing his application to study.

The sketches are expected to fetch up to ￡6,000 when they go on sale next month, a price that has more to do with the notoriety rather than talent of the artist.

??

Hitler's portfolio is said to show a moderate artistic ability no greater than the average GCSE (英國高中標(biāo)準(zhǔn)) student.

The works consist of nudes, human figures, objects and landscapes. Most are dated 1908, the year 19-year-old Hitler was rejected by the academy for the second time and not even permitted to sit the entrance exam. Others are dated the following year.

Hitler moved to Vienna as a young man in 1905 and lived a bohemian lifestyle, making a little money by selling pictures he copied from postcards.

At one point he ended up in a hostel for the homeless and later claimed it was in Vienna where the fires of his anti-Semitism were ignited. Michael Liversidge, Emeritus Dean of Arts at Bristol University, has studied the pictures.

'He said: 'They look quite typical of an aspiring student hoping to get into art school? -? tentative and not very certain about his perspective when he's using pencil and pen, making basic errors by getting the top and the bottom of a candlestick wrong in relation to each other and so on.

'He doesn't yet have much in the way of technical skill, but it's not so bad that one can't imagine him learning? -? especially when he's bolder with the charcoal or black chalk.

'But there's no latent genius here, and not much beyond a moderate GCSE. Probably if the artist was at school today you wouldn't encourage him to keep the subject up at A-level.'

Mr Liversidge said if the pictures had been submitted as part of an application to a major European art academy 'the selectors were right to reject him'.

'They just don't suggest he was more than pretty marginal and mediocre for a potential art school entrant - then or now,' he said.

'If they are what he sent in he definitely wouldn't have been worth interviewing for a place.

'Now, of course, they have an altogether different historical interest for us but sadly that isn't one that has anything to do with art.'

Richard Westwood-Brookes, of the auction house in Shropshire which is selling the archive, said the pictures were owned by an artist based in Europe who had had them for many years.

'It is the first time the pictures have come to light and can be seen by the general public,' he said. It is not, however, the first time that Hitler's early life as a budding artist has been on show. Last year a series of watercolours were sold in Britain.

They included what was thought to have been his first selfportrait. Painted in 1910, it showed a solitary figure with dark straight hair sitting on a stone bridge.

A cross was painted above the head along with the initials AH.