Joseph Beuys

Show Your Wound

1977

© DACS, 2021

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Not on display

Artist
Joseph Beuys 1921–1986
Medium
6 photographic negatives
Dimensions
Support (top left): 238 × 330 mm
support (top right): 240 × 329 mm
support (centre left): 238 × 328 mm
support (centre right): 239 × 329 mm
support (lower left): 237 × 828 mm
support (lower right): 237 × 329 mm
frame: 1070 × 790 × 50 mm
Collection
ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
Acquisition
ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Reference
AR00093

Online caption

'Show Your Wound' was an installation created by Beuys in 1974-75 in a bleak pedestrian underpass in Munich. Elements used there can be seen in these negatives; a pair of dissecting tables and the heads of two iron agricultural tools, mounted on wooden sticks. The wound was a recurring theme for the artist. On a personal level it referred to injuries he received in the Second World War, his breakdown in the 1950s and his heart attack in 1975. More generally, he used the idea to reference events in Germany's past and the divide between Eastern and Western cultures.

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