“Little Stone Hare (Kleiner Steinhase)” | special edition | screenprint | signed
As a draughtsman, action artist, sculptor and art professor, Joseph Beuys revolutionized contemporary art with the concept of “social sculpture” like hardly anyone else of his time. Originally trained as a sculptor, he soon broke away from conventional ideas and developed – also inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy – an expanded concept of art that included the creative shaping of political and social processes.
As a tireless interlocutor, not only in his function as a university lecturer, his theories were discussed internationally and influenced generations of contemporary artists. Nature and animal studies feature prominently in his drawings. In 1965, he opened one of his exhibitions at the famous Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf with the action “How to explain the pictures to the dead hare”.
The hare as a symbol of incarnation had a special meaning for him.
Eva Mueller | Art Consultant
Curator of the Koenigshof Collection
VITA JOSEPH BEUYS (short form)
Born in Krefeld in 1921 | 1945 member of the Klever Künstlerbund | 1946 Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf | 1951 master student of Ewald Mataré and collaboration on sculptural works | exploration of the social question in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy | 1961 professorship at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf | 1972 he had to leave the academy after he had accepted over 400 students into his class, thus overriding the usual admission procedures | 1978 member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin | 1980 member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden | 1986 died in Düsseldorf
EXHIBITIONS AND WORKS IN PUBLIC SPACES (selection)
1953 first solo exhibition in the house of the brothers Hans and Franz van der Grinten and in the Von der Heydt Museum | 1964 documenta III, Kassel | 1976 Venice Biennale, Italy | 1986 Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Prize, Duisburg
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA | Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt | Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA | Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich | Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich | Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin | Kunstmuseum Bonn | Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf | Neue Galerie Kassel | museum FLUXUS, Potsdam | Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain | Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA | Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D. C. USA | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA | Museum Ludwig, Cologne | Städel Frankfurt | MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA | Dia Art Foundation, New York, USA | Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld | Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland | Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA | Museum Kurhaus Kleve | National Museum, Kassel | Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France | Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan