501 - Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys Warum? Why? 1955 Mixed media on 2 papers on card 63 x 45 cm. Framed under glass. The lower sheet signed and dated “Beuys 55” verso. The card signed, dated, and titled “Beuys 1955 Warum? Why?” - Traces of studio and minor traces of age. Provenance Alfred Greisinger Collection, Augsburg (acquired directly from the artist); private collection, Bavaria (since circa 1984) Exhibitions Munich 1990 (A 11 Artforum), Joseph Beuys, A private collection, exhib.cat. p.34/35 (adhesive label verso) München 1986 (Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus), Beuys zu Ehren, exhib.cat., p.158 with col.illus. JOSEPH BEUYS A private colletion, South Germany “If I hadn’t made all those drawings, I wouldn’t have been able to do my political work either. I think I’d still be mulling over completely wrong ideas in my head if I hadn’t done that work. I still consider these drawings to be one of the most important things I’ve ever done, because all those attempts and experiments in drawing are an infinitely important tool for me. It’s also still completely unexplored, even for me. When I look at older drawings now, I think, this hasn’t been touched at all. There’s an incredible amount in there. So for me, it’s an important element of life.” (Joseph Beuys, in: Götz Adriani, Winfried Konnertz, Karin Thomas, Joseph Beuys, Leben und Werk, Cologne 1981, p.366 f.) Joseph Beuys - described by Klaus Gallwitz as “one of the most intellectually agile artists” - attributed a central role to drawing in his artistic thinking and practice. For him, drawing was a tool for gaining clarity about his political work, for provoking, for stimulating - a breeding ground from which something new could grow. His definition of the concept of drawing was equally complex: “I call everything a drawing,” he once said. (Joseph Beuys, in: Heiner Stachelhaus, Über Joseph Beuys, in: Artforum, München 1990, p.27). The openness of this approach is sometimes reflected in the diversity of materials, colours, and design elements used. In addition to laid paper, he used pre-lined, squared, annotated, or otherwise pre-printed scrap paper, which he collaged and reassembled. In addition, he worked with cardboard and cloth. Among the pigments he used were coffee, blood, meat broth, juices, water mixed with dust, iodine, and wood stain. Recognisable forms remain only hinted at in many of his drawings; they appear fragmentary and, at times, as if created by chance. During the winter semester of 1952–53, Beuys completed his studies as a master student of Ewald Mataré at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. The works presented here - 'Fahne (Torso) I' (Lot 504), 'Untitled' (Lot 502), and 'Warum? Why?' (Lot 501) - were created in the years that followed, during the early phase of Beuys’s work as a draftsman, and illustrate his diverse approaches. In his earliest work from 1955, 'Warum? Why', Beuys combines blood, coloured pencil, paint, and collage on paper. A fragmented human profile can be discerned in the watercolour-like, flowing forms outlined with pencil. The form of the untitled work from 1958/59, executed in mixed media on cardboard, can be interpreted as a female figure. The inscription “Nach dem Tode was hat da Gültigkeit” (“After death, what has validity?”), written vertically in pencil on the collage element of 'Fahne (Torso) I', opens up a layer of meaning that extends beyond the work’s formal design.