Joseph Beuys

de Heiner Bastian

This publication assembles a superb selection of some 200 drawings, watercolours and collages by Joseph Beuys that have not been seen in public for more than a quarter of a century. The drawings can be read much as one might read the dialogues of travellers between different worlds. Motives of extraordinary formal majesty bespeak their author's conception of the spiritual as aesthetic and allow us to rediscover the inscriptions of an ancient mythological world, whose rich seams of meaning have all too often been arrogantly cast aside in the course of human history. The key word here is metamorphosis, voices of becoming and the analogie universelle of a universe of the senses, to which Joseph Beuys lent expression as did no other artist of the latter half of the twentieth century. Exhibition: Galerie Bastian, Berlin, Germany (Sep.2013 - Jan.2014) / Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark (Feb. 2014 - May 2014) / and one further international place.