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        Joseph Beuys Propyläen   Beuys Joseph, *1921 1986 (Krefeld, Germany)
Worked with sculpture, drawing, performance, objects, prints and installations


Propyläen,1948-1961
Five woodcuts, 50.5 x 65 cm
© 2007, Pro Litteris, Zurich

Joseph Beuys understood art as the "realisation of human freedom". Natural materials like felt, fat, wax, honey and copper were his materials of choice, a symbolic spiritual vocabulary for energy, creativity and potential. After a crisis in the mid-1950s, Joseph Beuys developed an "expanded concept of art". For him, the work of art is "social sculpture".

In the drawings from the 1950s, processes of growth constitute a central theme. When Beuys later expanded his oeuvre, he applied his desire to explore transformation to ossified structures and creative, pulsating human-oriented forms.