The son of a Berlin banker, Badt studied art history and philosophy first at the universities of Berlin and Munich and then in Freiburg, where he was a student of Wilhelm Vöge. Among his fellow students was the young Erwin Panofsky. Badt completed his doctoral dissertation on Andrea Solario in 1914. He started his career as an assistant at the Kunsthalle Bremen, but most of his life he was an independent scholar teaching privately, as his family was wealthy and he did not need an academic job in order to earn a living. According to Alfons Rosenberg, he lived the life of a Renaissance humanist. In 1939 he left Germany gaining a research position at the newly founded Warburg Institute in London. He returned to Germany in 1950, where he became a German citizen in 1952 and helped to reorganize the university system. His writings include studies on Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Eugène Delacroix, Nicolas Poussin, Jan Vermeer, John Constable, Paul Cézanne, Raphael, Vincent van Gogh, Paolo Veronese, Ernst Barlach and attacks on the methodology of the "second Vienna school" of art history dominated by Hans Sedlmayr. He considered "masterpieces" to be the only works of art worth studying. Badt radically separated works of art from the deeds in history: the first are what artists have in mind, their works interest and currently attract the viewer as such, whereas the historical deeds intend effects and are related to their consequences and therefore tend to be absorbed by them. Furthermore, Badt explained his new fundamental approach to interpretation with the difference between historical action and artistic making: he differentiated the artistic work process from the distinct plans and designs, seeing it in each stage to be identical with the work as a draft. Therefore, he was able to understand and explain the finished work out of its work process. He did not see the artistic process as a mere fabrication technique, but as a method making visible to our general understanding the essence of what is to be represented
historian's relations
Badt, K. (1941). Andrea Solario: Sein Leben und sein Werke: Ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte der Lombardei. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Freiburg
Badt, K. (1943, October 30). Cézanne's Watercolour Technique. The Burlington Magazine, 83, 246–248
Badt, K. (1946). Eugène Delacroix Drawings. Oxford
Badt, K. (1950). John Constable's Clouds. London: Routledge & Paul
Badt, K. (1965). The Art of Cézanne. Berkeley: University of California Press
Badt, K. (1959). Raphael's Incendio del Borgo. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 22, 35–59
Badt, K. (1961). Modell und Maler von Jan Vermeer: Probleme der Interpretation, eine Streitschrift gegen Hans Sedlmayr. Köln: DuMont
Badt, K. (1961). Die Farbenlehre Van Goghs. Köln: DuMont Schauberg
Badt, K. (1963). Raumphantasien und Raumillusionen: das Wesen der Plastik. Köln: DuMont Schauberg
Badt, K. (1965). Eugène Delacroix: Werke und Ideale. Köln: DuMont Schauberg
Badt, K. (1968). Kunsttheoretische Versuche: Ausgewählte Aufsätze. Köln: DuMont Schauberg
Badt, K. (1969). Die Kunst des Nicolas Poussin. Köln: DuMont Schauberg
Badt, K. (1969. Ein angebliches Selbstbildnis von Nicolas Poussin. Pantheon, 27, 395–398
Badt, K. (1971). Das Spätwerk Cézannes. Constance: Druckerei und Verlagsanstalt Universitätsverlag
Badt, K. (1971). Ernst Barlach, der Bildhauer. Neumünster: Wachholtz
Badt, K. (1971). Eine Wissenschaftslehre der Kunstgeschichte, Köln: DuMont Schauberg
Gosebruch, M. (Ed.). (1961). Festschrift Kurt Badt zum siebzigsten Geburtstage. Berlin: De Gruyter
Betthausen, P., Feist, P. H., Fork, C., Rührdanz, K. & Zimmer, J. (Eds). (1999). Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Stuttgart: Metzler
Wendland, U. (1999). Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Vol. 1, pp. 21-24. München: Saur
Rosenberg A. (1974). In Memory of Dr Kurt Badt (vol. 29, 2, p. 5). AJR Information
Kuhn, R. (2013). Die wahre Schönheit der Dinge: Kurt Badt - ein Leben für die Kunst. Salem: Kulturamt Bodenseekreis
Arnheim R. (2004). Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. (p. 60). Berkeley: The University of California Press
Arnheim R. (1989). Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest (p. 106). Berkeley: The University of California Press