Beuys Joseph

German artist, theorist and teacher who was highly influential in international contemporary art in the latter half of the 20th century. He is a founder of the art movement known as Fluxus, and a practitioner and exemplar of happenings, and performance art. He adopted media and techniques including paint, sculpture, graphic art and installation. His work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk, for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping society and politics. His career was characterized by open public debates on a very wide range of subjects including political, environmental, social and long term cultural trends. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. In 1936 Beuys was a member of the Hitler Youth; the organization comprised a large majority of German children and adolescents at that time and later that year membership became compulsory. He participated in the Nuremberg rally in September 1936, when he was 15 years old. In 1941, Beuys volunteered for the Luftwaffe. In 1942, Beuys was stationed in the Crimea and was a member of various combat bomber units. From 1943 on he was deployed as rear-gunner in the Ju 87 "Stuka" dive-bomber. Drawings and sketches from that time have been preserved and already show his characteristic style. On 16 March 1944, Beuyss plane crashed on the Crimean Front close to Znamianka, then Freiberg Krasnohvardiiske Raion. From this incident, Beuys fashioned the myth that he was rescued from the crash by nomadic Tatar tribesmen, who had wrapped his broken body in animal fat and felt and nursed him back to health. Records state that Beuys was conscious, recovered by a German search commando, and there were no Tatars in the village at that time. Beuys was brought to a military hospital where he stayed for three weeks from 17 March to 7 April. It is consistent with Beuys work that his biography would have been subject to his own reinterpretation; this particular story has served as a powerful myth of origins for Beuyss artistic identity, as well as providing an initial interpretive key to his use of unconventional materials, amongst which felt and fat were central. Despite prior injuries, he was deployed to the Western Front in August 1944, into a poorly equipped and trained paratrooper unit. He received the German Wound Badge in gold for being wounded in action more than five times. On the day after the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, Beuys was taken prisoner in Cuxhaven and brought to a British internment camp from which he was released 5 August of that year. After his return to Kleve, Beuys met the local sculptor Walter Brüx and painter Hanns Lamers, who encouraged him to take up art as a full-time career. He joined the Kleve Artists Association that had been established by Brüx and Lamers. On 1 April 1946, Beuys enrolled in the "Monumental Sculpture" program at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. Beuys finished his education in 1953, graduating as master student from Matarés class, 32 years old at that time. He had a modest income from a number of crafts-oriented commissions: a gravestone and several pieces of furniture. Throughout the 1950s, Beuys struggled with a dire financial situation and with the trauma of his wartime experiences. His output consisted mainly of drawings, wh Read less