"Focus: Joseph Beuys" Exhibition
The Museum of Modern Art
This event has ended.
Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) is widely understood to be the most important German artist of the post–World War II period. Highly provocative and always controversial, he and his peers reinvented a thriving avant-garde after the long period of Nazi repression. His influence is comparable to that of the American artist Andy Warhol, but whereas Warhol's work features a style and imagery that is readily accessible, Beuys intentionally devised a challenging formal vocabulary, layered with meaning and metaphor. In Beuys's theory of sculpture, the process of transformation is paramount. The changeable nature of fat and felt, his signature materials, mirror this interest. As they are heated and cooled they shift from form to chaos and back again. The centerpiece of the gallery is a new acquisition: a set of five vitrines accompanied by two wall objects, constituting a mini-museum of works made between 1948 and 1982.
Media
Schedule
from May 21, 2008 to February 22, 2010