Artist: Joseph Beuys (1921 - 1986)
Nationality: German
Movement: Fluxus
Media: Sculpture, Performance
Influences:

Biography:
German artist, Joseph Beuys was one of the leading figures in the avant-garde movement in Europe in the 1970’s and 1980’s. After serving in World War II, he studied at the Dusseldorf Academy from 1946 to 1951. Ten years after graduation, he became a professor there. Beuys worked in array of medias but gathered the most recognition for his performance art. He joined the Fluxus movement in 1962, and became active in politics of West Germany. This led to controversy and he was forced to resign from his teaching position in 1972. His students protested and Beuys was able to keep his title and his studio but lost his teaching contract. In his late career, he focused on public speaking and became internationally known by the end of his lifetime.

Artworks in Museum Collections: (40)
Click the artwork titles below to see actual examples of artwork or works of art relevant to works by Joseph Beuys.

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Beuys, Uberwindet endlich die Parteinkiktatur!, 1969
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Joseph Beuys - Untitled 1982 silkscreen The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Fine Arts -
© 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn ; Joseph Beuys, German,
Museum of Fine Arts -
© 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn ; Joseph Beuys, German,
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Joseph Beuys - Energie Plan for the Westman 1974 chalk on slate Des Moines Art Center German
Museum of Fine Arts -
© 2001 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn ; Joseph Beuys, German,
Museum of Fine Arts -
© 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn ; Joseph Beuys, German,
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Margulies, Portrait of Joseph Pennell, 1925
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Emil Pirchan, The Legend of St. Joseph/Joseph has been brought in and dances., 1922
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Emil Pirchan, The Legend of St. Joseph/Joseph in chains, waits for his execution, 1922
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Kriehuber, Portrait of Joseph Matthias Graf Thun (1794-1868), 1842
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Paul Joseph Rauschmayr, Maximilian Joseph, King of Bavaria, 18th - 19th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, La St. Vierge et St. Joseph Cherchent Jesus Christ, St. Luke.2, 17th - 18th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, La Sainte Vierge et St. Joseph ne trouvent pas a loger, St. Luke.2, 17th - 18th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, Un Ange advertit St. Joseph de s"enfuir en Egypte, St. Matth. 2, 17th - 18th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, L"Ange dit a St. Joseph: Allez en la terre d"Israel, St. Matth.2, 17th - 18th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Emil Pirchan, The Legend of St. Joseph/Joseph"s resistence to __ attracted the attention of the Palace"s servants@, 1922
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Zirker, Untitled, 1971
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Swan, Strath-Clutha or the Beauties of Clyde by John M. Leighton (Glasgow: Joseph Swan, [ca. 1840], ca. 1840
The Metropolitan Museum of Art -
The Story of Joseph, cassone panel Biagio di Antonio (Italian, Florentine, active 1446-1516)Tempera on wood;
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Goldyne, Tulip and Grapes, 1980
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, Dieu revele a St. Joseph La Naissance de Jesus Christ. St. Matth.1, 17th - 18th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, La Sainte Vierge et St. Joseph se retirent dans une estable, St. Luke.2, 17th - 18th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Parrocel, La Sainte Vierge et St. Joseph vont de Galilee a Bethleem, St. Luke.2, 17th - 18th century
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Francesco Solimena - The Death of St. Joseph c. 1699-1700 oil on canvas Utah Museum of Fine Arts Italian
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Oswald Birley - The Rt Hon Joseph Chamberlain PC, MP 1937 oil on canvas Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery British
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Gilbert Stuart - Joseph Coolidge 1820 oil on wood National Gallery of Art American
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Augustus John - Joseph E. Widener 1921 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art British
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Thomas Sully - Joseph Dugan 1810 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art American
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Thomas Sully - Dr. Joseph Klapp 1814 oil on canvas The Art Institute of Chicago American
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Jacob Eichholtz - Joseph Leman c. 1808 oil on wood National Gallery of Art American
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Ammi Phillips - Joseph Slade 1816 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art American
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
LÈon Bakst (Lev Samoilovich Rosenberg), Costume design for Potiphar"s wife in the ballet, La lÈgende de Joseph (The Legend of Joseph), 1914
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Mariano JosÈ MarÌa Bernardo Fortuny y CarbÛ, Eglise de St. Joseph a Madrid (St. Joseph"s Church at Madrid), 19th century
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Nash, Frontispiece from Interiors and Exteriors in Venice by Lake Price lithographed by Joseph Nash from the original drawings, 1843
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Joseph Nash, Text from Interiors and Exteriors in Venice by Lake Price lithographed by Joseph Nash from the original drawings, 1843
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Cecilia Beaux - Portrait of Joseph Townsend c. 1893 oil on canvas National Museum of Women in the Arts American
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John Singleton Copley - Portrait of Joseph Scott c. 1765 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art American
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Giovanni Francesco Barbieri - Joseph and Potiphar's Wife 1649 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art Italian
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Philippe de Champaigne - The Dream of Saint Joseph c. 1636 oil on canvas The National Gallery, London French

Artnews Articles and Exhibition Information: (30)
Click on any of the links below to read about artnews or exhibitions related to Beuys

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art: Joseph Beuys: Editions

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) was one of the key artists in the post-war period. His revolutionary concept of ‘social sculpture’, that art could an should be part (a liberating part) of life itself rather than a separate act...
Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum: Thinking, Talking, Doing: Joseph Beuys for Children and Young People
During the Documenta 5, a large exhibition in Kassel in 1972, Joseph Beuys had discussed with visitors over 100 days. This took quite a lot of energy. Power, strength and energy were important themes in many of his works. The exhibition “Thinking,...
Royal Academy of the Arts: Joseph Beuys: The Secret Block for a Secret Person in
Beuys selected the drawings for the mysteriously-named The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland himself, from his output between 1936 and 1976, adding to the block throughout his career until it reached a total of 456 sheets. For B...
Edinburgh Printmakers: Gavin Turk: Faces Portfolio
In his “Faces” portfolio, Gavin Turk cleverly plays with Warhol’s legacy. In 1980, for example, Warhol produced prints based on his own photograph of Joseph Beuys, then the only living artist to match his celebrity status. By turning Beuys into ...
Tate Gallery, Liverpool: Last Chance! Contemporary German and American Art from The Froehlich Collection
To capture the unique spirit of the Froehlich Collection, this exhibition explores the contrasts and similarities between the work of a geographically diverse group of artists. Warhols iconi...
Sprengel Museum: 'A god-like human force...'
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Tate Modern: Performing Bodies
Artists include Yoko Ono, Derek Jarman, Laurie Anderson, Gilbert and George, Sam Taylor-Wood, Sarah Lucas, Yves ...
Michael C. Carlos Museum: Uses of Photography in Contemporary Art
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Seattle Art Museum: Anselm Kiefer and Germanic Tradition
This exhibition combines paintings, works on paper, and sculpture from SAMs permanent collection along with key loans. The other artists include Max Beckmann, Josef Breitenbach, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Markus Lüpertz, Albert Renger-Patzs...
Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard: Eat Art: Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth, Sonja Alhaeuser
The use of nontraditional, especially edible and organic materials, is a major theme in 20th-century art, and the works presented in Eat Art will incorporate a wide range of unorthodox artistic materials, including chocolate, margarine, salami, te...
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art: After the Beginning and Before the End: 222 Drawings from Picasso to Yoko Ono
The exhibition After the Beginning and Before the End - 222 Drawings from Picasso to Yoko Ono is about these beginnings. In 222 examples of the artist’s first steps toward the finished product, this exhibition s...
BildMuseet, Umeå: Taking Over - an art project by Andreas Gedin
The new work Taking over by Andreas Gedin an attack on Europe, as a beginning. He has carried out walks in the capitals of Greece, Germany, France, England and Sweden. In each city the carefully planned and labo...
Evergreen Cultural Centre: Call for Artists: Digitalis 2: The Spiritual in Digital Art
Please submit a maximum of 3 low resolution JPEG or GIF files as well as a bio, artist statement and proposal to electric@telus.net by June 1, 2002 The Evergreen Cultural Centre is located in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, near Vancouver (3...
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College: Summer Reading: The Recreation of Language in Twentieth-Century Art
Drawn from the collections of the Loeb Art Center and 14 public and private sources, this international survey unites paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, collages, books and book-objects, poet-artist collaborations, and more by over 50 ar...
South London Gallery: William Furlong: To Hear Yourself as Others Hear You
Come and See is a further work, installed in the entrance to the gallery, which through voice recording explores local issues, ideas, and identity, constructed from the words and sounds of Camberwell and Peckham residents. From school children to ...
Modern Museum: Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel was the official representative of Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Her piece Haus für Schweine und Menschen, which she ...
Reading Museum, Blake's Lock Museum: Homages and Other Things: Lorenzo Belenguer
Lorenzo Belenguer was born in Valencia, on Spain‚s Mediterranean coast, in 1970. After obtaining a degree in Economics at the local University in 1993, he decided he wanted to take his life in a different conceptual and geographic direction. He ...
Tate Gallery, Liverpool: Figurative Art at the End of the Century
Many of these works have only just been acquired by the Tate and are on show in Liverpool for the first time. Together, they create a powerful spectacle and raise issues ...
Dia:Beacon: Agnes Martin: Unknown Territory
Shown in the diffused natural light of Dia's galleries, this exhibition makes available classic works rarely seen due to their fragility and rarity. Closing November 7, 2005, "unknown territory" will be followed in December 2005 by an installation...
Dia:Beacon: Dia's Andy: Through the Lens of Patronage
A special publication, which takes Warhol's Interview magazine as a model, contextualizes the exhibition with images and facsimiles of published texts related to the works on view. Public programs include screenings of the artist's early films and...
Michael Werner Gallery: New Paintings by Jörg Immendorff
The iconographic language that Immendorff has cultivated throughout his career began while he was a student of Jospeh Beuys in the Sixties.  Immendorff responded to the chaos and social crises of a split Germany with a politically charged body of ...
Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College: Assemblance; If it's not love, it's the bomb
The selected works attempt to reconcile difficult histories through the resurrection of personal and cultural memories. This survey crosses experiential divides and examines the artists' continued proximity to the events they depict. Artists inclu...
JohnGordon Gallery: John Dahlsen: New Assemblages and Prints
‘These prints on canvas are a relatively new frontier for me, I have been working on perfecting this technique over the past two years with photographers and printers,’ said Dahlsen. ‘I have to say that the prints for this exhibition have really h...
PS1 Contemporary Art Center: Uniform: Order and Disorder
The artists: Adel Abdessemed, Matthew Barney, Vanessa Beecroft, Lina Bertucci, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, Maurizio Ca...
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen: In the beginning was MERZ: From Kurt Schwitters until today
He used the term MERZ for a concept which united all his artistic activities, naming his works MERZ drawings, MERZ paintings, MERZ sculptures, MERZ publications. He also organi...
Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard: Before Expressionism: Art in Germany circa 1903. An Exhibition for the 100th Anniversary of the Busch-Reisinger Museum
The Museum’s deep and wide-ranging collection includes important holdings of Austrian Secession art, German expressionism, 1920s abstraction, and material related to the Bauhaus, including archives of Lyonel Feininger and Walter Gropius. The Museu...
Haines Gallery: Multiple Personalities: An Onsite / Online Group Exhibition of Artist Multiples and Editions
Multiple Personalities comments on the history of the multiple and addresses the reasons behind this art form's development over time. Simply, a multiple can be defined as an art object that is produced in a quantity of more than one copy. Howe...
Nipple Gallery Arte Contemporanea: Corpo Elettronico video projections, digital stills and live performance by Elastic Group of Artistic Research
ELASTIC GROUP is a couple of video artist (Alexandro Ladaga e Silvia Manteiga) who from 1999 focuses his artistic research on the integration of philosophy and new-tech. ELASTIC video installation explore the relation between perception and interp...
Dia Center for the Arts: Panamarenko: Orbit - First Major Exhibition in the United States of Belgian Artist
This exhibition will pair the Belgian artist's key work, Aeromodeller, built from 1969-71, with a new piece created this year. Mixing the scientific with the artistic, the monumental Aeromodeller solidified Panamarenko's thinking and establish...
Guggenheim: Clemente
Born in Naples in 1952, Clemente moved to Rome in 1970 to study architecture. The '70s in Italy were marked by frequent student protests, massive labor strikes, outbreaks of urban terrorism, and sweepin...

Further Artwork and Information:

WAC | Joseph Beuys Multiples
Joseph Beuys Online
Joseph Beuys Archiv für erweiterte Kunst und soziale Plastik
HLMD Block Beuys
WAC | Joseph Beuys | A Brief Biography
Athena - The Joseph Beuys Online Guide
Joseph Beuys
Stiftung Museum Schloß Moyland - Joseph Beuys Archiv (Bedburg-Hau am Niederrhein)
Joseph Beuys Art Minimal & Conceptual Only
Alles über Joseph Beuys : Biographie Joseph Beuys / Literatur Josef Beuys

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