From 1971 to 1984 he was repeatedly elected Rector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and thus the first scientific and at the same time youngest teacher in this position in the history of the university.
For several years he was a pianist in the Krebsberggymnasium school orchestra under Josef Rein and, with a bassist and a drummer, formed a jazz trio, that performed publicly in Saarland until the mid-1950s.
Otto Steinert made it possible for Kermer to use the abundant photo workshops at the Saarbrücken School of Arts an Crafts for his experimental photographic work (photograms).
[14] After he had passed the entrance examination in 1957, Wolfgang Kermer studied for two semesters at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart with Hannes Neuner, an Albers and Kandinsky student at the Bauhaus,[15][16] where he encountered an open form of teaching that remained exemplary for him throughout his years as a university lecturer.
[18] From 1961 to 1962 he was at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart artistic and research assistant (Faculty of architecture, Chair of Professor Maximilian Debus [de], a student of Johannes Itten).
[19] At this time, after more than a decade of artistic work, that includes paintings, drawings, graphics, photographs related to Informalism, he stopped his exhibition activities to devote himself entirely to his scientific research.
[20] He completed long study visits to museums and collections in various countries to compile a critical catalog of medieval painted diptychs as a basis for the temporal, regional and iconographic interpretation of this pictorial form, which was at times highly valued in private devotion.
He has been the curator of numerous exhibitions and high school events and founded in 1975 the Academy Collection, which he built up over the course of more than two decades with works by current and former teachers as well as alumni.
[39] In the summer semester of 1974, Rector Wolfgang Kermer initiated a symposium for students of the Herbert Baumann and Rudolf Hoflehner Academy sculpture classes on the Leonberger Heide, the first event of this kind at an art university in the Federal Republic of Germany.
[41] Most of the resulting works remained accessible for years until they were removed from the city of Leonberg after they had already been sprayed with slogans for the RAF in autumn 1974[42] and were irreparably damaged over time.
Kermer's scholarly work has been devoted since the 1970s to the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and world-famous professors like Bernhard Pankok, Adolf Hölzel, Willi Baumeister, Gunter Böhmer [de], Alfred Hrdlicka.
[50] Guest events organized by Wolfgang Kermer in the 1980s with artists such as Roland Goeschl, Richard Hamilton, Oswald Oberhuber, Walter Pichler and Arnulf Rainer as well as co-operative exhibitions such as ″Art Education in Korea: Studies from the College of Fine Arts Seoul National University″, ″Anton Kolig″, ″The young Kokoschka″ and ″Brancusi Photographe″ activated the public relations work of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, a special concern Kermers since the beginning of his rectorate.
[63] On the occasion of his seventieth birthday in 2005, he gave his hometown Neunkirchen under the title ″Stuttgarter Begegnungen″, among others, works by Erwin Eisch, Alfred Hrdlicka, Markus Lüpertz, Chris Newman, Arnulf Rainer, Michael Sandle, Gustav Seitz, K.R.H.
The collection of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart contains a full-length portrait of Wolfgang Kermer, which the Austro-German painter Herwig Schubert (1926–2019) created in 1980.
[66] In 1984 Wolfgang Kermer was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany[67][68][69][70] and in 2006 he became Honorary Senator of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.