Joseph Beuys

One of the most significant figures in post-war art, German artist Joseph Beuys saw his artistic practice as a conduit for social transformation. His multifaceted practice spanned sculpture, performance art, installation and social theory. Beuys once said, ‘in the future all truly political intentions will have to be artistic ones. This means that they will have to stem from human creativity and individual freedom.’

Beuys was born in Krefeld, Germany, in 1921, and became interested in pursuing a career in sculpture during his school years. In 1941 Beuys volunteered for the Luftwaffe and began training as an aircraft radio operator in Poland. He began making drawings and sketches while stationed in various regions during World War II. In 1945 he was briefly interned at a British prisoner-of-war and returned to his parents in the suburb of Kleve three months later. Beuys would spend the rest of his life and career coming to terms with his war-time involvement, which informed much of his art.

After the war, Beuys decided to dedicate himself to art. In 1946, he enrolled in the monumental sculpture programme at the Kunstakademie Dûsseldorf. He read works by James Joyce, the German Romantics Novalis and Friedrich Schiller and was influenced by Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci. In 1961, he was appointed professor at the Academy and fostered a generation of artists including Anatol Herzfeld, Blinky Palermo and Sigmar Polke.

Beuys’s students were inspired by his passionate views on art, life and activism. He did not impose his artistic style on his students, but rather encouraged them to explore their own ideas and methods. Beuys had a great desire for continuous intellectual exchange, applying philosophical concepts to his pedagogical practice. Beuys’s reputation and the shamanic example he set as an artist concerned with the social reform of the world rather than with mere aesthetics or the history of art gained him an almost mystical status in the eyes of many.

Beuys saw his drawings as sculpture. Created in direct collaboration with his audience, while he spoke, lectured and engaged with them, Beuys’s blackboards are the culmination of his concept of drawing as a translation of thought into form. Calling them ‘monuments’ of his ‘method’, the blackboards’ fusion of action, thought, word and image into one educational entity crystallised Beuys’s ideal of using the creative nature of humanity as a catalyst for socio-political change.

Joseph Beuys died in 1986 at the age of 64. His influence as an artist and educator during his lifetime and beyond is undeniable. Not only inspiring artists that came after him, but Beuys was also the subject of celebrated portraits by his contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Martin Kippenberger. Joseph Beuys remains a pivotal figure in art history, whose innovative approach continues to provoke discussion about the role of the artist in society.