Joseph Beuys

Beuys took part in the Second World War as a fighter pilot. During a mission in 1943 he crashed over the Crimea. During his sick bed, Beuys was treated with tallow and wrapped in felt. This experience was decisive for him and his later art materials, because alongside wax and copper, fat and felt were among his preferred materials from which he formed works of art. Between 1946 and 1955 he joined the Kleven Artists’ Association. From 1947, Joseph Beuys studied painting and sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He was a student of Josef Enseling and later a master student of Ewald Mataré. In 1953 he had his first solo exhibition of sculptures and drawings in Wuppertal and Kranenburg. Beuys suffered from depression due to his war experiences. That’s why he stayed in Kranenburg for a long time in 1957. In 1961 he was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He taught there until 1972. In 1964 he took part in the Kassel art exhibition documenta for the first time. From then on he exhibited there regularly.

In 1965 his first exhibition was organized in Alfred Schmeler’s gallery in Düsseldorf. In 1967, Beuys founded the “German Student Party” on the occasion of the unrest surrounding the Shah’s visit to Germany and the murder of the student Benno Ohnesorg. Beuys wanted to advocate for universities to operate autonomously and for a fairer admissions process. In 1970 he founded the “Organization of Non-Voters, Free Referendum”. In the same year an exhibition took place in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt. In addition to drawings and pictures, the so-called “Beuys Block”, multi-part room installations, were also shown there. In 1971 Beuys founded the “Organization for Direct Democracy through Referendums”. In a spectacular action that same year, Beuys and his students occupied the secretariat of the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He also allowed students who had previously been rejected by the academy to take part in his lessons.

The following year he took part in documenta 5. There he exhibited an office of his “Organization for Direct Democracy through Referendum” and was present there every day of the hundred days of the exhibition. Once again, Beuys filled the academy secretariat with rejected university applicants. He received notice of termination from Johannes Rau, the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister for Science and Research. Public protests against the termination came from Martin Walser, Peter Handke, Heinrich Böll and Gerhard Richter, among others. In 1973 he founded the “Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research”. Three years later he took part in the Venice Biennale and the Berlin Zeitgeist exhibition. In 1978, the legal dispute over Beuys’ dismissal because of the occupation of the secretariat was ended. The artist had sued against the dismissal and was granted justice. The termination was unlawful. Beuys agreed to a compromise that granted him the title of professor and the rights to use the studio.

In 1978 he accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. A year later he received a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and he ran for the European Parliament. In 1980 he took up a visiting professorship at the Städel Art School in Frankfurt/M. true. He tried for a seat in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia for the Green Party. In 1984, Beuys exhibited his works at the Seibu Museum in Tokyo. His other exhibitions include the event “Cross and Sign – Religious Foundations in the Work of J.B.” in 1985. and participation in “German Art in the Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture 1905-1985” in London. In addition to his efforts to unite nature and spirit in art, Beuys also valued the political commitment to which he used his work. The basis for the politicization of art was his idea of applying the artist’s creativity to all areas of life.

In practical terms, he carried out actions such as planting 7,000 oak trees and setting up 7,000 basalt steels for dokomenta 7 (1982) in order to draw attention to the problems of environmental destruction. Beuys often used his variety of artistic forms of expression for counter-projects, which he equipped with magical-religious elements in order to demonstrate his rejection of a purpose-oriented rationalism.