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German charismatic and controversial artist, a committed teacher, and a political activist, considered one of the most influential of the European avant-garde artists. Joseph Beuys termed much of his work “social sculpture,” by which he meant to suggest his utopian belief that art had more than an aesthetic function.



Beuys served in the German air force throughout World War Two. In 1943, his plane was shot down over the frozen Crimea. Those who found him tried to restore his body heat by wrapping him in fat and an insulating layer of felt, which is likely the origin of the recurring materials in his sculptural works.Following the war, Beuys concentrated on art, and studied at the academy in Düsseldorf.



During that time, starting in the mid-60s, Beuys worked with the avant-garde art group known as Fluxus. It was during this period that he began to stage "actions," where he would perform works in a ritualistic way. Perhaps Beuys' most famous performance work is How To Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), in which he walked around a gallery with his face smeared with honey and covered in gold leaf, carrying a dead hare to whom he talked, explaining the pictures before them. The audience for this performance was kept outside, only able to see the goings on from behind a clear screen. Beuys said the work was concerned with issues such as human and animal consciousness, and the problems of thought and language.

Among his better known works are Felt Suit(1970), a felt suit exhibited on a coat hanger; the performance piece Coyote, "I Like America and America Likes Me" (1974), for which Beuys wrapped himself in felt and stayed in a room with a coyote for five days; and the sculpture Fat Corner, which is fat piled into the corner of a gallery space.

In his life work Beuys tried to overcome materialism by combining it with spirituality. In his synthesis of the arts he even used the Berlin wall as a piece of art. By throwing a Blood sausage over the concrete wall (from West to East Germany), he tried to unify the nation symbolically.
For Beuys, every person was an artist; every action a work of art. His expanded definition of art caused both sensation and fierce debate during his life. For him, works of art were as fleeting as life itself. He didn't want to create eternal works, but to start people thinking.


Transformer (Documentary dir. John Halpern, 1979)