Joseph Beuys – Zeichnungen / Drawings

This publication assembles a remarkable selection of some 180 drawings, watercolours and collages by the artist which will be exhibited for the first time after more than a quarter of a century.

The drawings can be read much as one might discover the poetic magic of a wanderer between the worlds bespeaking his conception of the spiritual as aesthetic in bold motives of extraordinary formal majesty and allowing us to rediscover the inscriptions of an ancient mythological world, whose rich seam of meaning have all too often been arrogantly cast aside in the course of human history.

The key words of these unique works are initiation and metamorphosis, voices of becoming and decay and the ›analogie universelle‹ of a universe of the senses, to which Joseph Beuys lent expression as did no other artist of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition »Joseph Beuys – Drawings«, Gallery Bastian, Oct. 4, 2013 – Feb. 8, 2014, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Feb. 26 – Jun. 1, 2014, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Jul. 27 – Sept. 21, 2014.