Joseph Beuys was born into the family of a cattle and fertilizer merchant. The family moved to the industrial city of Kleve (Lower Rhine) the same year. There Joseph went to a Catholic school (1927-1932), then to a gymnasium, where his talent for drawing was noticed. The boy studied piano and cello, attended the workshop of painter and sculptor A. Moortgat for a short time.
1921 - 1986
Joseph Beuys
description
A German sculptor, draftsman, one of the leading theorists of Postmodernism, professor at the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf, a public figure. Joseph Beuys was actively involved in issues of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy, which led to his expanded concept of fine art, the creation of social sculpture. The creator is considered one of the founders of such performance art as fluxus, which became popular in Germany. In this regard, Andy Warhol called Beuys the “ideal partner”.
The activities of Joseph Boyce cover four areas: material works in the traditional artistic sense (sculptures, paintings, drawings, art objects), staging and execution of actions and stock fluxes; works on the theory of art used in teaching, as well as socio-political activities (organization of parties, meetings with politicians, the Dalai Lama, etc.).
Beuys is world-famous as one of the most important innovators of 20th-century art. The largest collection of the master’s works is held at the Berlin Hamburger-Bahnhof Museum, which also houses the most comprehensive media archive. The museum is a center for the study of the artist’s work. From 2008 to 2014, the Joseph Beuys Theater was operating in Moscow.
Key ideas:
– In the late 1940s and early 1950s, drawings of Joseph Beuys, who studied at the Düsseldorf Academy with Expressionist sculptor E. Matare, were similar in style to primitive rock paintings. The artist depicted moose, sheep, hares, other animals with a lead pin and watercolour. Among his sculptural works were custom-made tombstones.
– We can notice that Beuy’s art was influenced by Steiner’s anthroposophy and works of V. Lembrook, E. Barlach, consisting in the preference for attention to plastic forms and their laws, rather than to the task of the plot or external effect.
– In the early 1960s, Beuys became one of the founders of the Fluxus method as a specific variety of performance art. Numerous fluxus-actions of the artist were a synthetic action, similar to something like a circus parade-alle (as a teenager, Beuys ran away from home with a traveling circus for almost one year).
– Having secured his significant image (cloak, fishing vest, felt hat), Beuys used unusual and even shocking materials for art objects: fat (mostly lard), honey, felt and garbage. Usually, they were included in compositions with completed objects of industrial production.
– The “fat corner” became a cross-cutting motive in his monumental and chamber works. In the works of the artist’s late period, a sense of the dead-end estrangement of modern society from nature sharply emerged – the innovator tried to restore unity or at least bring “nature” closer to the magical, more often to the “shamanistic” level.
– Having begun to preach “social sculpture”, Beuys took art to an anthropological level reducing its aesthetic significance. Convinced that every person is an artist at their work, he encouraged everyone to participate in the world creative revolution. To do this, he came up with such techniques as an action on collective sweeping of streets or planting several thousand oak trees.
1921
1936
1939
1943
1946
1961
1964
1972
1974
1976
1979
1983
1986
The birth of the artist
He was fond of literature and anthroposophy
He became a member of the Hitler Youth since membership in it was mandatory. Participated in a rally in Nuremberg. He was fond of literature and anthroposophy.
Worked at a circus
Worked at a circus: drew posters and looked after animals. After graduating from high school in 1941, he soon volunteered to serve in the Luftwaffe. At the University of Poznan, where his military unit deployed, he attended lectures on botany, zoology, and geography.
He made drawings and sketches
As a bomber’s shooter, he made drawings and sketches in which his style appeared. The following year, his plane was shot down over the Crimea, which became the source for “personal mythologization” of Beuys’ biography. Having returned, despite his injuries, to the Western Front as a paratrooper, he was wounded more than five times; after surrendering, he spent three months at a British internment camp.
He entered the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts
Having become a member of the H. Lamers’ circle of young artists in Kleve in 1945, he entered the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts; sculptor E. Matare was his main teacher. From 1948 to 1950, participated with drawings and watercolours in group exhibitions three times.
Received the title of professor
Received the title of professor, headed the Institute of Monumental Sculpture at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts; worked on the Siberian Symphony, Part 1, where the figure of a dead hare appeared for the first time (the version of 1966 is called Eurasia).
The first solo exhibition
Participated in the exhibition “Documenta” in Kassel; the performance “How to explain art to a dead hare” was first shown at his first solo exhibition at the gallery of A. Shmela. Three years later, Beuys created a political party for students in response to the death of a participant in a large student demonstration in West Berlin.
He was fired from the Academy for organizing a protest
Participated in the exhibition “Documenta” in Kassel. He was fired from the Academy for organizing a protest in defense of applicants who were denied enrollment. Although the federal court later ruled the dismissal unlawful, Beuys abandoned his professorship, wanting to be an artist independent of the state.
Beuys opened the Free International University
Together with G. Belle, realizing his ambitious plans, Beuys opened the Free International University – anyone could become a student without age restrictions and without going through any entrance contests. First went to the USA, conducted a ten-day lecture tour in a number of cities; in the René Blok Gallery (New York), the famous action “I love America and America loves me” was held with the participation of a coyote. A year later, the artist suffered a severe heart attack.
Participated in the Venice Biennale
Participated in the Venice Biennale (Italy); the following year, he demonstrated “Honey pump at work” at the Documenta-6 in Kassel – it occupied most of the space in the Fredericum rotunda.
"Rocca Paolina"
First met with Andy Warhol; The Guggenheim Museum (New York) devoted an extensive retrospective exhibition to Beuys. The following year, his exhibition was held at Rocca Paolina, Italy; a year later, his first show was held in Germany; in Bonn, he met with the Dalai Lama, to whom Beuys presented his vision of “global social sculpture”.
“The End of the Twentieth Century”
Completed the famous installation “The End of the Twentieth Century” from huge pieces of basalt; it was the continuation of the “7000 Oaks” campaign held at the Documenta exhibition in Kassel a year earlier. His last lifetime exhibitions were held at the Seibu-Museum (Tokyo, Japan), the Capodimonte Museum (Naples, Italy) and the Marisa del Re Gallery (New York, the USA).
The death of the artist
Joseph Beuys died on January 23 in 1986 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Joseph Beuys
On Artist
flow
Neo-dada
Conceptualism
friends
Andy Warhole
Robert Morris
artists
Ewald Mathare
Wilhelm Lembrook
Ernst Barlach
By Artist
flow
Neo-dada
Conceptualism
Environmental
Performance Art
friends
Andy Warhole
Robert Morris
Nam June Pike
Georg Baselitz
Gerhard Richter
artists
Anselm Kiefer
Imi Knobel
Jörg Immendorf
Jochen Herz
Gunther Eucker
Yoko Ono
Sigmar Polke
Robert Smithson
Rosemary Trokel
Blinky Palermo
Odd Nedrum