Joseph Beuys
1921–1986
© DACS, 2026
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© DACS, 2026
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Artist and Society
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Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( BOYSS; German: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈbɔʏs]; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, Johannes Stüttgen, Caroline Tisdall, Robert McDowell, and Enrico Wolleb, Beuys created the Free International University for Creativity & Interdisciplinary Research (FIU). Through his talks and performances, he also formed The Party for Animals and The Organisation for Direct Democracy. He was a member of a Dadaist art movement Fluxus and singularly inspirational in developing of Performance Art, called Kunst Aktionen, alongside Wiener Aktionismus that Allan Kaprow and Carolee Schneemann termed Art Happenings.
Beuys is known for his "extended definition of art" in which the ideas of social sculpture could potentially reshape society and politics. He frequently held open public debates on a wide range of subjects, including political, environmental, social, and long-term cultural issues.
Beuys's social sculpture proposals and underpinning ideas have been extensively explored, shared and developed through the practices, pedagogies, actions and writings of his master student and collaborator Shelley Sacks, first in South Africa in the 1970s as a branch of the Free International University (FIU); in the first Social Sculpture Colloquium, hosted by the Goethe Institute in Glasgow (1995); from 1997-2018 as Professor in Social Sculpture in the Social Sculpture Research Unit (SSRU) at Oxford Brookes University, where Johannes Stüttgen, Caroline Tisdall and Volker Harlan were research fellows; and since 2021, through the Social Sculpture Lab, curated by Sacks and hosted by the Documenta Archive in 2021 for the Beuys Centenery. The Social Sculpture Lab continues to engage with, develop and share Beuys's social sculpture understandings through such initiatives as the 7000 HUMANS Global Social Forest,. which has close connections with Beuys's 7000 Oaks, Sacks' social sculpture-connective practice methodologies, and a growing network of Social Sculpture Hubs in Germany, India, Holland, Brazil and UK.
Beuys was professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1961 until 1972. He was a founding member and life-long supporter of the German Green Party.
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